An Echo Speaks
by LavenderAndTime
Summary: Some time after "Planet of the Dead", the 10th Doctor stumbles upon an impossible girl. Her name is Clara Oswald, but she's something of an enigma. How is it that she's covered in time energy when she's never time traveled a day in her life? And why did she tell him to 'run and remember? AU. 10/Clara
1. First Steps Into The Dark

**Hello new readers! I only have two pieces of business to take care of quickly, and they are as follows:**

**1) DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the _show's_ characters or plot ideas used in this story, nor do I receive money or any other funding from the writing of it. This is written purely for entertainment's sake.**

**2) RATING NOTES: This is rated T because there are character deaths. I know that this can be a trigger for some, so I thought it might be wise to mention it now.**

**In case anybody wonders, Clara is introduced ****properly in the next chapter. This chapter can be considered the prologue, in a way.**

**Happy reading!**

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Chapter One

_First Steps Into The Dark_

Above the glitz and glamour of New York City, a sphere waited to drop. It was of a grand size, made up of many interlocking triangular panels that all had lights attached to them. It sat perched upon its pole, patient for the time yet to come. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people, humans of all shapes and sizes, eagerly waded through Times Square, making the Doctor just another face in a large crowd.

The Time Lord stood silently on the sidewalk, once stepping aside for a family of eager and pushy tourists. Yet in truth, he wasn't much different from them, those tourists who had probably flown all the way to New York City from Italy. They had both flown a long way to see this, this brilliant celebration of Earth's achievements and coming future. The only difference was that the small Italian family of four probably had friends and family and a warm home filled with happy memories to return to afterwards; he did not.

He gazed around with a melancholic air, whilst the rest of the Earth celebrated. Children danced down the street, blowing on noisemakers and chewing on candy. Parents tried- with no luck- to herd their kids away from the flashy vendors, who were making their way through the bustling city with colorful wares of glow sticks, stuffed hats, and New Year's glasses. Babies cried in mothers' rocking arms. Elsewhere, fresh young couples embraced in the crowds, though most kept it very chaste, knowing that the time for that special first kiss of the year was soon to come.

A sad smile crossed the Doctor's face, if only for an instance, as he remembered the last time he was here, waiting for the turn of the second millennium, year 2000.

_He came with Jack and Rose, back when he armored himself in leather. It was Rose's idea. They had parked the TARDIS down a dark alleyway blocks and blocks from all the action, and ultimately decided to stand within the massive crowd on the streets instead of using the psychic papers to get VIP access. It was completely worth the trouble. As they joined the mass of people in Times Square that evening, the pure __euphoria that was generated overtook all of their hearts, becoming more magical than every faraway nebula. Thousands, gathered together in mutual celebration. It was one of the most brilliant moments in the Doctor's life, he'd like to think, a moment of untouched happiness among the countless days of sorrow. The human race, banded together as one- if only for a single shining moment- as they took that first brave step into the unknown._

_He remembered the announcer of the special news broadcast, instructing the people to get ready to count down the seconds 'till midnight. Just a few minutes left._

_"Here we are, Rose," he had told her. "A brave new world." The blonde girl grinned, and squeezed his hand._

_"A brave new world," she agreed with a laugh. "They've got it coming for 'em, too. Autons, Slitheen, mad alien collectors..."_

_"Him," he muttered, and gestured towards Jack, who had been flirting with a young man, a beer in hand. "I keep telling you, I'll dump him out here one day if he keeps that up."_

_"No you wouldn't, though!" _

_"Oh, yes I would! Just watch me!"_

_The two began to snicker at the ridiculousness of this. It was at this moment the former Time Agent chose to make his grand entrance. When he stumbled over his feet, Rose laughed harder. Jack quickly dropped his bottle of beer to the ground and slapped his arms up over the pair's shoulders. "Heyyy Rosie... Doctor... How've ya' doing?"_

_Rose smirked, raising one of her brows in jest. "Jack, you've been drinking, I can tell."_

_"And never been better!" He grinned cheekily. The trio stood in a line together for the next few seconds. They were an unshakable team. The Doctor, Jack, and Rose. They looked back and forth among each other, heartily exchanging fond memories and funny stories as the clock ticked the seconds 'till the New Year. Soon the world reached the minute mark, and the crowd began to bellow out as one connected body._

_"Here we go!" Jack smiled at his friends, kissing their foreheads. "Never goin' back now..."_

_The Doctor grunted, and shifted his arm under Jack's grip. "We've got a time machine, idiot, we can always go back."_

_"Play nice, Doctor," Rose reminded him with a frown. _

_Finally, it was the thirty second mark. "30... 29... 28..." the world screamed in one voice._

_"It's been fantastic, you know," the Doctor said as he stared up at the Times Square Ball, which was slowly sliding down the pole. The people surrounding the trio roared in approval, almost succeeding in drowning out the Time Lord's friendly words. "Traveling with you two. I'd have to say, you've changed me for the greater good."_

_"And me," the captain agreed._

_"And me." Rose gave her most winning smile. "I was just a shop girl before you came along, and now won't yer look at me! I'm saving the world everyday with the universe's best men!" She reached towards the Doctor and squeezed his hand. He gave a small smile back. _

_With an almost inaudible grunt, he moved Jack's arm off of his shoulder and shifted a few steps away from him. Rose quickly followed after him, and slipped her small hand into his own._

_"10... 9... 8..."_

_He gazed into her eyes, slightly dazed. Rose glanced up at him, a small grin flicking across her lips, the one where her tongue would poke through her teeth. For just a moment, the Doctor could tell she was slightly confused._

_"Doctor, you okay?"_

_The Doctor quickly snapped back to life, and he gave her a taunt smile. _

_"5..."_

_"Spin me!" Rose shouted suddenly. He grinned, and twirled her around him._

_"4..."_

_She landed in a dangerous position, her feet almost slipping out from underneath her. With a small laugh, the Doctor caught her back, and pulled her up._

_"3..."_

_Rose looked into his eyes then, scarcely breathing. The Doctor stared back. They stood with their arms on each other's shoulders, all of the world coming to a stop around them. It was like the rest of humanity had suddenly ceased to exist._

_"2..." _

_"Rose," he began. _

_"1... HAPPY NEW YEAR!" _

_It was this moment that everything happened at once._

_The world broke into a mighty cheer, as the Times Square Ball hit the base and confetti burst out of cannons from the side of the streets. One second Rose was standing in his arms grinning, the next, she was being torn away from him. He saw Jack, swooping her down and pressing his lips to hers, effectively stealing her New Year's kiss. The two of them laughed as the captain brought her back up._

_The Doctor glared at him for just a moment before locking up all that emotion behind his armor, where it would stay for years to come._

The Doctor, hiding his hands away in the dimensionally transcendental pockets of his brown overcoat, also glared as he thought back to these memories. He reached up to his suit jacket pocket, and dug deep in, dragging out a silver key on a leather cord. It was the key he gave Rose, all those years ago. She took it with her, when she fell into the parallel universe. But just recently, this key appeared in the TARDIS on the main console, and after testing to see whether or not it contained void stuff, he had confirmed it as the same one. He liked to think Rose and his human counterpart had managed to find a way to send it back to him, just a small object, back through the very walls of creation to this universe. Perhaps it was a sign that she was happy with him and letting go of the past.

And yet for some reason, he couldn't do the same for her.

His eyes glanced up to the throng of people, celebrating underneath the cloud of confetti. He knew the exact place his old incarnation and Rose and Jack stood. If he had wanted to, he could have bounded over to them, crashed his lips against Rose's, and changed time.

...But of course he couldn't. Rose needed to be happy, and there was no doubt she wouldn't be happy with him. It was because of him she got trapped in a parallel world, because of him she got separated from almost all of her family and friends. She had a chance now, to be happy, with his human counterpart. But it would never really be HIM, because even the whole universe knew, the Doctor would rather die before admitting to love.

With a sigh, he dropped the key back in the breast pocket of his blue suit. A group of party-goers in the building above him jammed their fingers down on air horns, adding yet one more insufferable noise to the sweeping symphony that was called New Year's Day. He could barely even think in all this clatter, let alone attempt to speak.

Yet think he did. And while standing there, his mind lapsed back to all the times he had travelled to this exact night. (Or day, as it was now, about 12:03 in the morning...) Two of him, not including he himself, were in New York City proper. His ninth incarnation and Rose and Jack were in the crowds, and his fourth incarnation was somewhere hovering up in the sky, watching the celebrations from the TARDIS with Romana. Then there was his eighth incarnation, which was right now landing Grace Holloway and that young American-Chinese boy back in San Francisco, just after defeating the Master. His sixth incarnation and Peri were also celebrating, although they were in London, not in the United States. But the point was, he had been here a lot. Usually, he would try not to go to even the same day twice, but here he was in the same city at the same hour, within a few meters of his last incarnation. He didn't quite know why. He just felt led here, like he was supposed to come.

Like something important was going to happen...

At that precise moment, a flying blur of red slammed into the Doctor and knocked him to the ground. His elbow hit the hard concrete first, sending a sharp jab of pain through the nerves in his arm. Behind him, he could hear something splash on the sidewalk. It had splattered on his coat, and the clothes of quite a few close bystanders. The people surrounding the scene gasped in surprise, looking up to the building looming above their heads. Three young men stood guiltily at an open window, one of them shouting his apology down to the street.

The Doctor caught his breath and turned back to where he _had_ been standing. A young woman, no older than 24 years old, stood rigid where he had once been, looking no less surprised than he had been. Her dark brunette hair and the top of her red dress were soaked with a dark liquid, likely beer. She flicked her gaze up for a second, then turned and looked directly into the Time Lord's eyes.

"Run, you clever boy. And remember!" Her lips turned up into a smirk, and then she ran away.

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_Next chapter..._

_"Doctor?" she asked, trying to pull answers from him. "Where are we going?"_

_"Vague question."_

_"Okay. What are we trying to find? Something you picked up on your screwdriver, yeah?"_

_He glanced over his shoulder at her, and simply nodded. "I can sense evidence of temporal tampering somewhere within the city. I just need to find where..."_

_The two passed another empty crosswalk before the Doctor slipped down a dank alleyway, where a blue box sat. Clara recognized it immediately, having grown up in the UK. It was one of those old police boxes that one would often have seen on the side of the road back over the pond. But that was years ago. People barely used them any more. And this was America. What was a police box doing here?_

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**We'll meet our Impossible Girl in the next chapter! Thank you so much for reading! Reviewers will get a preview of the next-to-be-posted chapter. That goes for all future chapters, too! :-)  
**

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:  
****39 days to go...**


	2. The Empty Planet: Clara

**So, because I am a restless person and I finished a future chapter way ahead of schedule, I am updating early. Big thank-yous must be given to darck ben for reviewing, B****lloom1234 for favoriting, and LeilaTheGalaxyDefender, Miss-Fantomette, Miz636, The Dancing Iguana (nice name, btw), Watercolors2, and moviegal102 for following. Wow, you guys! I seriously didn't expect to get that many follows in just two days, especially with this being my first story posted on this account. So thank you very much! Your readership is very much appreciated.**

**The base concept for this first part comes from The Sarah Jane Adventures episode of the same name, "The Empty Planet". (That show is also amazing, if you haven't watched it already, I recommend it! The plots are pretty complex for a kid's show.) **

**The general idea is where similarities stop, however. The solution to everything is quite a bit different. You'll see as the plot develops. Hope you enjoy! **

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Chapter Two

_The Empty Planet: Clara_

He struggled to get up, still shocked from the suddenness of the rescue, if it was even that. It was what, a can of beer that had dropped from the sky? As he pushed himself up from the sidewalk with weary knees, he saw the attacker, which was a now empty tin can currently attempting to roll away from the wet scene of the crime. It was likely an accident, he assumed with a sniff. There was obviously no hostility here, just a bunch of drunken humans.

Twisting his head, the Doctor attempted to locate the direction in which the girl had gone. Even his superior Time Lord vision had a hard time fishing out a soaked red dress and mid-length brown hair in this crowd, he had to admit. His eyes flicked around like crazy, taking in every individual, watching for any and all runners, calculating every possibility as to where she could have gone... It took a good 10 seconds before he located her, brushing out of the crowds a good three blocks away. He ran after her, leaving the clump of people that had formed to watch the aftermath of the beer-drop incident.

Sprinting through a crowd was hard, VERY hard. There always seemed to be humans bundled up into quite large groups, just standing idle right in everybody's way, like living roadblocks. Then there were the children, too short to see until it was too late, who would often end up walking underneath parent's legs. Nonetheless, the Doctor made an effort, running until his hair flew every-which way and his overcoat soared. There was a good reason he wore running trainers and not dress shoes like many other incarnations had... And this was it.

After nearly crashing into a store display, almost stepping on a young child, and dozens of hushed apologies, he ducked underneath a separating partition and finally exited the crowd. He began to slow down, and with a few hard thumps against the slightly quieter sidewalk, (there were still quite a few people walking around him, actually), came to a rest. He squinted. Oh, there she was... She was reading a poster taped to the side of a building, just one block down. With a heavy sigh, he jogged on after her.

_What have I come to_, he thought glumly, _that I am now nearly stalking after the girl who saved me from a wet head?_

The Doctor caught up with her then, plodding up behind. She now had a small towel wrapped around her, shielding her from the wet cold. The young adult didn't turn at first. So he lightly tapped her shoulder to get her attention. The woman took a short, surprised intake of breath as she whipped around to face him. The alarm in her eyes quickly died down, however.

"Oh, it's just you, is it," she said calmly. Her accent was clearly British, then. Rather surprising. She couldn't be from here. "The nice-suit boy... Whatdya want?"

The Doctor paused. "I just- I wanted to thank you. For doing what you did back there."

The smallest of smirks crossed her lips, and she looked up at him, (a long ways up, as it was, for she was not very tall), with a pitying glint in her eye. It was almost the same expression one would give a child who was obviously mistaken in some manner.

"And...?" she asked.

"Pardon, what?"

"You're not finished," she continued. "I can tell. I doubt anybody would crash through a crowd like you did just to thank someone."

The Doctor's brows crinkled together, mentally congratulating her sound deduction. "Wellll... I'm not anybody. But you're right, in a way. I just need you to answer me this." He stepped closer to the girl, his countenance now laden with curiosity. "Why did you say what you did, back there?"

She seemed confused. "Why'd I say what? I didn't say anything, I stepped in front of you and accidentally got beer poured down my face, big deal!"

"You pushed me!" the Doctor protested. "You shoved me to the ground, and after you got your head soaked, you looked me straight in the eye and said, 'run you clever boy and remember', but why?"

She shook her head. "I really didn't, though. I swear I didn't even know it was going to fall. It was pure luck!"

The Doctor shook his head, now completely and utterly shocked at all this. She told him to remember, but why couldn't she? "There's no such thing as luck," he muttered. "Everything happens for a reason."

Suddenly, the brunette woman froze, her face scrunching up into confusion. She glanced over his shoulder, worry reflected in her irises. "Doctor?" she asked hesitantly. "Why'd it get so quiet suddenly?"

The Doctor turned his head at her question and glanced at the streets, where once hundreds of thousands had been.

Except now they were completely empty.

Merely seconds ago, the streets had been alive with cheering, families celebrating this new millennium together, friends goofing around, band music being played up on a stage in the center of Times Square now blocks away, and even people sifting through knick knacks and trinkets in the stores lining the sidewalks. And now... everything was just silent. Deathly silent. Every single living human seemed to have been ripped from the surrounding city. And the cars- almost all the cars that had been driving down the road a few blocks away were no longer there either. There were still a few lining the streets, unmoving, but everything was still. There was almost no noise, save the crinkling of electricity and the static of TV monitors and advertisement billboards above on the looming skyscrapers. Then there was the almost creepy sound of their near-silent breathing...

"What..." he muttered, stepping out from the sidewalk to make sure it wasn't an illusion of some kind. It wasn't. "What? Where'd they all go?"

"That's what I was asking," the young adult said, stepping up behind him with arms crossed. "They just disappeared all of the sudden, almost like-"

"No, hold on," the Time Lord breathed suddenly, whirling around on her. "A few seconds ago, you called me Doctor. I haven't told you that yet. So how did you know?"

She practically looked up his nose as she slowly stepped back from his looming ferocity. "I- I'm actually not sure," she blurted, stroking her chin with her balled left fist as she thought. "It just... felt right. You know, like a guess."

The Doctor sighed. "Well, it was a very, very, good one." He receded back into a resting position. "Did I ever get your name?"

The woman seemed a bit dazed. "It's Clara. Clara Oswald."

"Nice to meet you, Clara. I'm- well, you already know who I am, don't you? The Doctor... It's just the Doctor, by the way. Nothing else." He took a hazed breath. "Blimey. Well, we'll have to figure this out, now, won't we?"

"I suppose we will," Clara muttered, still quite dazed. "But ya know... The question shouldn't be why aren't the people here. This whole time, I've been wondering... Why are WE here? Why were we left behind?"

"Oh, that's brilliant, Clara, I think I like you already!" the Doctor enthused, and immediately slid out his sonic screwdriver. He began to run across the street with it in hand. Stopping midway, he raised it in the air, activating its blue emitter. It made a high-pitched buzzing sound, shattering the carpet of silence that had fallen on the surrounding area.

"What IS that?" the brown-headed woman questioned.

Without turning to look at her, the Doctor answered. "Sonic screwdriver. It can scan stuff... It can do a lot, actually."

"So what are you scanning?"

Now he did turn around. Clara stood there, perfectly attentive, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for him to explain. This was almost too good to be true. "Scanning for people," he began to tell her. "In this whole world, there are currently only thirty humans, but not including me. That's thirty out of what should be around six billion, in year 2000..."

"I'm one of the thirty, though, right?" She raised a brow. "And hold it, 'not including me', is that what you said?"

"I'm not human."

Clara blinked. "Ah. Okay..." She reached up to scratch her face, and it was only then her brain decided to catch up with her. "Wait, if you're not human, then... What are you?"

The Doctor smirked slightly, and shook his head. He could tell, in the way she raised her question and how the corner of her mouth tilted up into a smirk that she was challenging him, trying to see if he was really telling the truth. But it was definitely not the right time for questions like that. "Oh, not now... Maybe later. Anyways, thirty humans. Since you're being picky, we'll change that to thirty-one humanoids. Thirty-one out of billions, the rest of humanity stripped from planet Earth like a band aid from a wound..."

Clara starred at him, impatient with his fancy small talk. "Basically, you're saying they've been abducted. By more aliens?"

He shrugged. "Aliens, yes. Abducted... eh, well... maybe, but probably not. Most cars are gone, too. 'D take too much power."

The young woman glared at him in disbelief. "So we don't know anything, is that what you're telling me?"

"No... Not true!" the Doctor corrected. He crossed his arms, poking his sonic screwdriver up between them, and continued to take scans while he explained. "While we may not know HOW they came to disappear, I do have a very solid hunch on why there are only thirty-one of us... I just need to see..." His sonic continued to probe, and he intently gazed down his nose upon the sleek silver device, ultimately forgetting about Clara standing right next to him. "Common, common, common, common... _Yes_! I've got it!"

Clara raised both eyebrows, beckoning him to tell her the apparently great news. He grinned.

"As I thought! Us thirty-one are all time travelers! It makes total sense! Ya' see, there's this thing called the time vortex, it's all swirly and timey-wimey and such, and when people like you and me go through it," he pantomimed this by sliding a finger through a hole created by his other hand, "we get covered in a sort of time energy. Soaks through us, right to the core. Can never get rid of it. Harmless, though. Won't hurt a bit. And, well... I know for sure that a good twenty-six of us here have this time energy because of me, I've got a time machine, sometimes take people along... The others might be Time Agents. But I know for sure there's me, two friends I made in San Francisco, an American currently in London, and-" He trailed off all of the sudden, glancing around nervously. "Oh, that's right. Clara, if you see a blonde-headed girl and a handsome young man with a long coat and terrible pick-up lines, tell me, please! I need to avoid them."

Clara smiled mischievously at him. "I'm haven't seen a blonde girl, but I'm pretty sure my eyes have rested upon that handsome young man you were speaking of earlier."

The Time Lord squinted, glancing around. "Really, where?" He looked to Clara for help, confused when all she would do was stare at him deviously. Then he understood. "Oh, no, I'm not-"

"You really are, though."

"But... pick-up lines?"

Clara snorted. "Yes, Mister I've-Got-A-Time-Machine! Still not sure you're telling the truth."

"But... terrible?"

"The absolute worst," she joked. "Now, you said you had a hunch on why we were here."

"I just explained it," the Doctor interrupted. "The time energy stuff. Now, let's go." He began walking further down the street.

"Where?" she asked, running after him. It wasn't easy work. It took her nearly two strides to make up for one of his. "Where could we possibly go?"

He didn't answer, instead just ambling along the sidewalk, seemingly with no particular destination in mind. Clara hopped beside him, talking as they walked.

"You're not just gonna leave me, are you? You can't do that!"

He didn't respond, instead just flicked his sight down to her for a second. He smiled, not saying anything. Oh, she did not know what was coming. The first reaction was always the best, so might as well let them leave it to imagination...

A good distance away, he could hear a heart-wrenchingly familiar voice. He doubted Clara could hear it. But it was calling out for him. Rose Tyler was searching for him. Well, not for _him_, really. For past him. She was looking for his last incarnation, the one she first travelled with. Whatever had latched onto the human race had presumably taken all of his younger selves, too, leaving just him to save the day. It made sense, to only keep the oldest version of a time traveller, the one with the most time energy. It was better that way. Certainly no confusing timeline crossing was needed here.

The young brunette woman at his side gawked at him, annoyed. Her lips settled into a well-deserved frown. He wasn't even speaking at all, just walking very quickly, mouth slightly agape. His brain was likely going a hundred miles per minute, though, the way his eyes would flick back and forth.

"Doctor?" she asked, trying to pull answers from him. "_Where_ are we going?"

"Vague question."

"Okay. What are we trying to find? Something you picked up on your screwdriver, yeah?"

He glanced over his shoulder at her, and simply nodded. "I can sense evidence of temporal tampering somewhere within the city. I just need to find where..."

The two passed another empty crosswalk before the Doctor slipped down a dank alleyway, where a blue box sat. Clara recognized it immediately, having grown up in the UK. It was one of those old police boxes that one would often have seen on the side of the road back over the pond. But that was years ago. People barely used them any more. And this was America. What was a police box doing here?

The mysterious man in front of her still didn't talk. He reached deep into his pocket and retrieved a small silver key. Fumbling with it in his hand, he then secured it in the lock of the door, and turned his wrist. There was a quiet click. He prepared to open the door- albeit IN, instead of what it said on the sign, PULL to open- but took one last glance back at her, and spoke for the first time in minutes.

"Last chance to leave, go back to a somewhat ordinary life, if you wish. Speak out now."

Clara just seemed confused. Her gaze flicked back up to the Time Lord. "It's a police box," she stated flatly. "How is that going to help us?"

The Doctor sucked in some air through his teeth. "Yeah, well, it's a bit more than that..." He pushed open the door with a flourish, and bounded inside. Clara stood at the doorway, her mouth dropped open. There was no back wall to this police box. There was NO back wall. Could it really be?

Slowly and carefully, she stepped inside. As her foot met the metal grating of the time machine, a dull chime rang from somewhere beyond, hushed, but noticeable all the same. The Doctor practically glided up to the center platform, and spun around in triumph, as if silently saying, "I told you so!"

Clara gazed around in wonder, taking in the magnificent yet alien sight. As she adjusted to the change in light her vision blurred, and the scenery around her blended into something of a full entity. Her balance wavered, but before she could stumble over she grabbed ahold of the railing for support, and began constructing a permanent mental image of her surroundings. The weathered console covered in buttons and levers sitting in the very middle of the massive room made it seem almost anciently old and very futuristic, but the coral pillars (at least, she thought they were coral... Space coral, maybe?) gave it a sort of... -how could she describe it?- an organic feel, perhaps? It was very beautiful, that she knew. Most importantly, and the first thing she had noticed, was that it somehow defied all physics by being much, MUCH bigger inside than she could have ever imagined...

But it's-" she started.

"Bigger on the inside, yes," the Doctor completed with a smirk. He currently had on his 'I know everything' face. "Any more questions?"

Her mouth was still halfway to the floor, but she dared to ask anyways. "If you're an alien, why do you speak like you're from the southeast of England?"

The Doctor about choked. Out of all the questions in the universe that Clara could have asked, that was not the one he would have ever expected to hear. It was certainly out of the ordinary. But then, it seemed as if she wasn't necessarily an ordinary girl...

There was something about her that just seemed... Off. Something even he couldn't pinpoint. Something so hidden that the girl herself didn't know... She knew his name was Doctor somehow, without him having to tell her, but she didn't know why. The first time he saw her, she told him to run and remember, but she didn't know WHY. For a human girl, she was doing quite the good job of perplexing him.

And she didn't even know it.

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_Next chapter..._

_As she was suddenly wondering if the Doctor's strange futuristic multi-tool could unlock things, she saw it, a few meters to her left. It was cracked open ever so slightly, an odd light dusting the linoleum floor. She stepped forwards and titled her head._

_"I really, really have a bad feeling about this," she told herself, "but I think I'm gonna do it anyways." Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the door and carefully opened it. It squeaked on its hinges. She couldn't see anything at all; the room inside was pitch black._

_"Doctor? Are you in here?" she called hesitantly. No answer, but she could hear dull breathing. A dark shape appeared by the far wall as her eyes got used to the dark. Her muscles relaxed. "Okay, I get it. Hide-and-seek, very funny, but can we just get around to figuring out what-"_

_The breathing turned into a low guttural growl._

_"The-"_

_The shape moved around, revealing tiny, beady orange eyes. She stopped talking then. Her bones almost liquefied in fear as it lunged out at her with black, spiny claws. Not at all ashamed, she screamed, leaping back from the creature's reach._

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**#SaveTheDay (50th) Countdown:  
****37 days to go...**

**Also, I hear the trailer should be coming out any time now! We can only hope and wait...**


	3. The Empty Planet: Time And Monsters

**Hello readers, I would like to give a big thank you to moviegal102 for the great review, kiasairen for favoriting, and Souffle11, donkeysarebolos, and lindsey20 for following. Your support is very much ****appreciated!**

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Chapter Three

_The Empty Planet: Time And Monsters_

Clara stepped out of the blue box- which was apparently called a 'TARDIS', according to the Doctor- in a daze. She was about to open her mouth to say something, but then she became aware of the fact that indeed, as the Doctor had promised, they had moved in space. It was a spaceship, then. She had been in a real, proper spaceship. It certainly blasted away any thoughts she still had about him being human. She absorbed the sight around her like a plant would absorb the sun's rays- they were in a building, that's to be sure, a really nice one at that. It wasn't just offices, but rather... luxurious offices. On a few desks, bouquets of flowers sat in crystal vases, and she had to try really hard not to sneeze because of them. The lighting in the room flickered, causing her to flinch.

The Doctor had said that this was the epicenter. Whatever had happened to make every human soul disappear from the face of the Earth; this was where it all had started. She stepped toward the window to see where exactly they had landed. Outside gleamed the nighttime skyline of New York City, so obviously they couldn't have moved that far. She pressed her cheek to the ice cold glass pane, and looked down to the empty streets. Oh. A long way down, then, dozens of floors down. There were dozens of floors above, as well. They were in a skyscraper.

"Am I in the World Trade Center?" she asked, tapping her wrist habitually. She still, at this point, wore the towel she had attained around her neck, but decided now was the time to part with it. Just one more ruffle of the hair, and then-

**THWONK**

It landed on the floor in the corner with a satisfying sound. She smiled, but annoyingly enough, the lights above her chose that time to act up again.

Just then, something dropped, and a voice bellowed from back in the box. "Sorry? Did you say something?"

She shook her head, working things in her mind herself. She wasn't going to let this suit boy one-up her every time. "Never mind, I've figured it out. This would be the North Tower, yes?"

"South tower, actually," the charismatic alien corrected, emerging from the blue box. He closed the door behind him with a squeak. "But close enough."

"Close enough," Clara muttered under her breath. "It's not exactly what you'd like to hear when you're one of the last humans on Earth. Oh, don't worry, you're not dead, but you're close enough! You didn't reach the door to the fire escape in time, but you got close enough!"

"Clara, quiet down," he called from a few meters away. She could hear him fiddling with that screwdriver thing of his. "You're muttering..."

She crossed her arms, indignant of this young man who insisted on telling her what to do. "Yeah, well what's it to you? I can mutter all day, if I'd like!"

The Doctor reached into his pockets, pulled out a pair of dark tortoise-shelled glasses, and slipped them on. He began to focus intently on a small electrical panel on the far wall. "Yeah, you could..." he admitted, walking closer to investigate the panel. "But it's not that appealing. Let alone helpful."

Clara raised her brows. "Oh, really then? You know what? I have no idea why I'm deciding to trust you, let alone talk to you, but..." She took a breath, and walked closer to the Time Lord, who was sitting on the floor, sonic screwdriver in hand. "There's a little voice of reason in the back of my head that's telling me I should. So don't you dare disappoint me, because my whole planet is empty. Now, tell me, in actual proper English, what I can do to help."

The Doctor glanced at her for a moment; his eyes glazed over with sadness, but didn't respond. After all, this was how all companions started, but he didn't want another. Not now. He couldn't bear being the cause of another death, or universe displacement, or memory loss.

With a quiet sigh, he swiveled back around to check the progress with his sonic screwdriver and the electrical panel. The whole square cover was lain on the floor, revealing spark plugs, wires, and what looked to be a cooling system. He squinted, and poked his sonic screwdriver in further. Then all of the lights switched off with a dull hum. Instinctively, he jerked his hands away. Nothing could be seen in the room except by the bright luminosity of New York outside the large wall-sized windows.

"Did you do that?" Clara queried. "The lights were flickering before."

"I didn't do that," the Doctor murmured quietly. "The power should be on. The World Trade Center's big enough; even its _backups_ have backups!"

Another low pitched humming noise accompanied the lights switching back on, row by row. Clara took note of the Doctor, still crouched on his knees in front of the wall.

"Okay," she pointed out, "that was strange."

"Mm, and caused by something," he agreed. He jammed his sonic tool back in the electrical panel. "And I intend on finding out who."

"Who?"

His brows crinkled. "Clara, from what I've seen, this circuit hasn't seen any energy pass through for at least three days." To prove his point, he touched his fingers to where the plug would have gone, and was (luckily) not electrocuted. "See? Nothing. No power. Kaput. We're lucky there's any lights on in here at all. But for a power drain to happen in this building, well... There has to be someone here who's been tampering."

Clara suddenly began to put everything together. "Could they use the power drain to take away billions of people from planet Earth?" she asked, her brow raised.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," the Doctor nodded.

She crossed her arms. "But hold on... This still doesn't make much sense. To teleport _that_ many people, wouldn't you'd need more power than what could possibly be generated by one building?"

"Sound reasoning," he declared, becoming busy with the contents of the electrical panel once more. "We'll find the answer sooner or later."

Sensing that this was the end of conversation for now, Clara took a seat in one of the office chairs nearby. She crossed her right leg over the other, and lounged back, relishing in the sudden moment of relaxation. As she rested from the sudden adventure she had found herself in, her attention turned to the mysterious Doctor. He seemed... familiar, for some reason. She knew she had never seen the man before, because he was a man a person would remember, but there was just something about him that struck so many memories in her mind, little images. Shaking it off, she smiled slightly as he was busy at work. His face was scrunched up in thought as he poked his special tool through the wires, quite the comical expression.

"That's it!" he shouted suddenly, jumping to his feet. He pulled the glasses he had been wearing off his face rather recklessly, and shoved them in his inner coat pocket. "Got it! Allons-y, Clara!" He grabbed Clara's small hand and yanked her out of the comfy chair. She yelped in surprise. Running, the two rounded a corner. The young woman almost tripped over her feet due to the massive difference in their strides. She quickened her pace, and observed the office space flying past her. Yes, this was probably a law firm, she'd guess. A rather sizable one, if they were able to get space in the World Trade Center.

They rounded another corner, and Clara found them right in front of a bunch of elevators. (She didn't plan on asking how he figured out their location so quickly.) Huffing, she stomped to a complete stop. The Doctor let go of her hand and slapped a button. He took a breath. "We're going to floor forty-two, there's a massive power surge there, masked, but just the tiniest bit visible!"

She leaned up against the wall, panting. "And the power surge is because of the drain?"

There was a ding. The elevator door opened, and they slid inside. "Yep, from what I've seen, somebody was here, and they were rewiring the circuits. They've literally carved a new path through the mainframe, and all the missing energy..." -he paused for dramatic effect- "was sent to level forty-two." Rather gleefully, he pushed the four and the two buttons. "See? I knew I liked the answer to life, the universe, and everything for a reason!"

The doors slid back closed with a surprisingly unholy squeal for a highly traversed civil building. Clara turned to look at him.

"Did you really just make a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide? Aliens actually know about all that?"

The Doctor chortled. "As I've said before, I've got a time machine. Travels through space as well, I've been to this planet enough to know my fair share of pop-culture references. I do like a good book! Or movies. Or those books that are converted into movies, like Harry Potter. I actually sat in the very front row at the world premiere of- Ah, wait... I'm too early, aren't I? It's not 2001 yet."

Starring at him, her countenance was a mix of complete confusion and amusement. "No?" she said, although it was really more of a question. The lights inside the elevator zapped on and off, making her nervous. "Am I the only one worrying that we could become stuck?"

"Probably," came his flippant answer. She sighed.

Luckily for her however, it was then the elevator decided to stop, and the doors slid open. Before it could break down and leave her trapped forever, she bolted out.

They were in a small lobby. A rather resplendent receptionist desk with a mirrored front sat a few meters away, before a silver sign that read, "Electro Works". Huh. Ironic, since the electricity seemed to be playing games with them. Clara assumed it was the name of a business. They had probably rented out this entire floor for their use. Surrounding the elevators hung a few paintings, nothing too fancy, mainly just modern art. There was one hanging over by some chairs that slightly resembled a sparking battery. The power was just as fickle here as it was back a few floors up by the TARDIS.

Two hallways snaked off from the lobby, one to the left, and one to the right. The left looked to lead to office space, the right... Storage, maybe? There wouldn't be any labs in here, would there?

"Floor forty-two..." the man mumbled quietly. "What are you hiding?"

"Doctor? Can you sense anything?" Clara asked, her eyes flicking around the open space. "Any temporal anomalies? Doctor?" She twirled around, the material of her dress swishing at the knees, to see a blur of brown and blue running down the hall at her right hand side. Her resolve made, she dashed on after him, but her pace was slow compared to his. "Hey Doctor, wait up!" she cried, reaching out a hand in protest.

Too late. He slid around a corner, letting his intelligence lead the way, and she with nowhere to go. Huffing, she peeked into the next hall, the one the mad alien had seemingly gone down, but there was nothing to be seen or heard. Not even a closing door, or the squeak of those trainers he wore.

_He cares more about the weird things going on than you, you know_, that disdainful voice in the back of her head whispered in a sneer.

"I don't CARE about that," Clara sneered quietly, "in similar circumstances, I would too! My whole entire planet is empty, now shut up."

_But it's not, you know. It's not empty. There are still a few people. All here because of HIM. All suffering, thinking all their family and friends are gone, because of HIM._

She raised her hands in confusion. "Why are you even arguing with me about this, I barely know him!"

_That's what you'd like to think_, the voice purred. _Ta-ta, my Clara..._

And like that, everything was silent again. She hated those voices in her hallucinations that came to taunt her, thought to be just a symptom of her old depression. It would come to her at the most inopportune moments to chip away at her stupid insecurities. Clara growled, crossing her arms.

The power flickered, leaving her suspended in darkness for a second. It certainly did not help that the only thing that surrounded her were doors. There were just boring, plain doors. Doors, doors, doors, doors, doors. Frustrated, she walked up to one, and tried opening it. Her hand rattled the chilled metal handle, but nothing happened. Locked. She tried another, rattling harder this time. Also locked. Good heavens, was every single door this way closed off?

As she was suddenly wondering if the Doctor's strange futuristic multi-tool could unlock things, she saw it, a few meters to her left. It was cracked open ever so slightly, an odd light dusting the linoleum floor. She stepped forwards and titled her head.

"I really, really have a bad feeling about this," she told herself, "but I think I'm gonna do it anyways." Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the door and carefully opened it. It squeaked on its hinges. She couldn't see anything at all; the room inside was pitch black.

"Doctor? Are you in here?" she called hesitantly. No answer, but she could hear dull breathing. A dark shape appeared by the far wall as her eyes got used to the dark. Her muscles relaxed. "Okay, I get it. Hide-and-seek, very funny, but can we just get around to figuring out what-"

The breathing turned into a low guttural growl.

"The-"

The shape moved around, revealing tiny, beady orange eyes. She stopped talking then. Her bones almost liquefied in fear as it lunged out at her with black, spiny claws. Not at all ashamed, she screamed, leaping back from the creature's reach. She whipped around to find the door, only to brush into a warm body.

"And-a-run!" the Doctor shouted, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her outside. He slammed the door shut, and once more broke into a sprint, except this time with a still-shocked Clara in tow.

"What the HELL was that?!" she questioned as her hair flew behind.

"Honestly, no idea."

"Why'd you just leave me back there?!"

He shrugged, and led them around a corner. "You were slow, so I figured it all out, come on!"

He ran with her into a small electrical control room, just barely bigger than a closet, and finally let go of her shaking hand. She glared, and punched him in the arm.

"Ow!"

"Don't you ever do that again!"

"I see, I save your life, and that's the thanks I get!"

Clara crossed her arms. "I've saved yours more," she whispered, unknowing.

"What?"

"I- I didn't say anything." She began to shiver then, cold chills wracking her body, and closed her eyes.

"You're cold," the Doctor observed, standing rigid in front of her.

"No, I'm not," she protested, arms crossed over her chest. "I'm fine."

"You're lying. That's the biggest lie in the universe, I would know."

Clara opened her eyes and looked up at him. He was taking off his long overcoat. He slid his arms out of the sleeves, and draped it over her shoulders. It was very cozy. The smallest of smiles crossed her face. "Thanks," she muttered.

He just nodded, his attention turning to the electrical controls. There were rows of thick switches there, to control the floor's lights and other things. What she hadn't noticed was the sparking black device attached to it.

"What is-" she started, before he interrupted to explain.

"That," he told her, "is what is causing all our problems. Pristine construction, I've never quite seen anything like it." He pointed to the see-through glass on the side of the rectangular object, revealing a swirling, glinting nebulae of roaring color. It was almost mesmerizing. "Oh, beautiful, you are..." he gushed, starring at it with a smile as long as the horizon. "How beautiful..."

Clara's face twitched, and she leaned up next to him to look at it closer. "So how does this work, even? How could something as small as this take so many people?"

The Doctor turned to her, his nose nearly centimeters from hers. "It didn't take them. It took us, the 31 on Earth at this exact moment who were covered in the time energy. Suspended us just out of reach, a few seconds out of sync with the rest of the universe. That right there," he pointed to the swirling colors contained in the box, "that's a tiny remnant of the time vortex. I have no idea how anyone managed to get their hands on that, but somehow... I think they might have gotten it to expel an alpha wave."

"What's an alpha wave?" she asked, and then hesitated. "Or should I have asked that?"

"An alpha wave, completely different from a delta wave or a theta wave, is a highly undetectable signal thrown out by the time vortex, naturally it latches onto a time capsule or anybody with a device that lets them travel through time, brings them in," he explained, apparently ignoring Clara's hesitancy. "I couldn't go anywhere but now without it."

Her face was blank. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"Well, yeah, that's the thing... What happened here, with all of us, was almost like that, but not exactly. We haven't traveled into the time vortex- I'd know. We've just been stranded a second out of phase."

Clara sighed, her head beginning to hurt from all the technobabble and explanations, though she was fairly certain he had been dumbing it down already. "Oh, it's just my luck I happened to stumble into a time traveler, right?" she said.

"Like I said once before- there's no such thing as luck. But Clara, I need you to understand this. Listen to me. That-" he paused, reverting to vagueness for her sake, "that thing that brought us here, it ONLY effected time travelers, people who were saturated in time energy, like me. It can't be transferred; you have to travel time yourself for it to take effect. Which begs the question..."

"How am I here...?" Clara realized. She shook her head, holding up her hands in protest when the Doctor glanced curiously at her. "I'm not a time traveller, before today I hadn't even spared a thought to imagine it existed!"

"That can't be the case, though," he muttered. "There's no way somebody your size would get through the alpha wave, unless..."

Clara's face contorted into a glare. "Hey! Watch it, there! No poking fun at my height!"

"No, I'm serious! This stuff, this technology, if you try putting an elephant through it, it wouldn't- oh, never mind." He sighed, running a hand through his hair.

The young woman leaned back against the metal grating on the wall, pulling the coat closer around her. She listened as the Doctor continued.

"But you see, whoever built this needed more energy, more than provided by the wave. That's why they connected it up to the power grid, and why it's so cold here. It's literally sucking up heat and power just to sustain us being here."

"Can you reverse it?" Clara asked.

"Sure, but I'd more like to meet the person who brought us here first,"

**BANG**

The two flinched, turning to look at each other. In both of their eyes was reflected the same emotion, fear of the unknown. Although, in the Doctor's, there was probably a great dose of excitement as well.

"What was that?" she exclaimed, sidestepping in front of him.

The Doctor shook his head in denial. "Oh, no, I didn't, did I? In all this trouble, I forgot to lock the doors."

Clara's eyes went wide. "You don't mean, then-"

He lightly touched her shoulders, whispering into her ear. "Clara... Turn around VERY slowly..."

Millimeter by millimeter, they turned, Clara being only slightly reassured by the still sound of the Doctor's breath in her ear. Her eyes crossed as she looked at what had followed them to the electrical closet, and was now snarling in front of them. It had black, scaly skin, a demon-ish face, and small beady eyes that nearly starred into her soul.

It roared, a loud echoing sound that nearly burst her eardrums. And then it lunged for them.

* * *

_Next chapter..._

_"There's some brilliant technology in here..." the Doctor said, hushed._

_The Kratxonite smiled, the first genuine smile Clara had seen the whole time. "Yes, we have benefited from trade of ideas with your people, Time Lord. While we might not have developed the technology of linking an alternate dimension to an exterior shell first, we did develop ours from scratch."_

_The ancient man smirked. "You figured it out, then."_

_"What?" Clara asked, confused._

_"His people," Kratx clarified. "The Time Lords. The highest of the time-aware species. They actually developed time travel, and then tried to keep it all for themselves..."_

_"Not all of us," the Doctor quickly interrupted, arms crossed._

_"Of course, that never would work," he continued, unfazed. "Due to their frequency on Kratxon for trade, my people began to immediately recognize them by their high concentration of time energy. That is mainly why I hesitated from consuming you in the first place, I am sorry to say... Thought if I could find a Time Lord, all my problems would be solved," he shrugged. "But look at my luck, instead of one Time Lord, I find two!"_

* * *

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:  
****36 days...**

**No trailer yet, but we got a picture of David Bradley as William Hartnell playing the First Doctor! :D The likeness gave me chills...**


	4. The Empty Planet: The Lone Kratxonite

**Thanks to Miz636, LeilaTheGalaxyDefender, donkeysarebolos, Peaceful Sunrise, and Souffle11 for reviewing; eve995 for favoriting; and to Peaceful Sunrise, eve995, KreativeGirl, and ivysoapy for following! We'll get some answers this chapter...**

* * *

Chapter Four

_The Empty Planet: The Lone Kratxonite_

**Last chapter...**

_He lightly touched her shoulders, whispering into her ear. "Clara... Turn around VERY slowly..."_

_Millimeter by millimeter, they turned, Clara being only slightly reassured by the still sound of the Doctor's breath in her ear. Her eyes crossed as she looked at what had followed them to the electrical closet, and was now snarling in front of them. It had black, scaly skin, a demon-ish face, and small beady eyes that nearly starred into her soul._

_It roared, a loud echoing sound that nearly burst her eardrums. And then it lunged for them._

_-8-_

"I can help you!" the Doctor bellowed desperately. His hands were up, braced to protect himself. However, the alien creature screeched to a stop, clawing at the floor to release its kinetic energy. "Please, I can help," he repeated. "Just let me help."

The animal-like creature cocked its head. Clara was still breathing hard, trying to calm down after the rush of adrenaline. The man next to her continued to try and rationalize with it.

"You understand me, don't you? Listen, I think I know what you need, and it isn't this. Just calm down... Disable your perception filter, we won't hurt you."

The creature whimpered almost like a dog, and scratched its sharp claws on the floor, leaving marks. There was a low pitched humming noise, and then a flicker of light appeared, enveloping the creature, as its features melted into that of different life form. It was small, a good half-shorter than Clara, with two large, wise eyes and ears almost like a fox. Its face and arms were covered completely with matted dark orange fuzz, and it was wearing expensive looking robes that seemed to be calked with dirt. All in all, if she had looked upon this creature before meeting the Doctor, she would have assumed she had stumbled into Narnia.

"How did you know it'd do that?" Clara whispered to the Doctor, as they lowered their hands to their sides.

"He, not it," he corrected. "Perception filter, after years of traveling you learn to recognize the signs."

"You are not from Earth," the small alien said to the Doctor, and it wasn't even a question, just a statement. His voice was the smoothest voice Clara had ever heard, like a creamy vat of milk chocolate.

The Doctor shook his head. "Nah, I'm not, am I? But I do care about the Earth. Enough to worry when 30 innocent inhabitants are stripped off its surface."

"I mean no harm to the people of this planet."

Clara frowned. "What was up with the claws then? What was all that? That's not harm?"

The orange-faced alien tilted his head, much like the creature did earlier. He did not speak.

"You tried to eat us!" she protested.

"I mean no harm to the people of this planet," he repeated.

"Claws?"

"I mean no harm to the people of this planet."

Clara sighed, and then swiveled to talk to the Doctor. He was silently laughing. Her face almost glowed in shock. "It's not funny!" she scolded, and the smile on his face instantly dissipated. "He's just repeating now, he won't talk to me. You try with 'em!"

The Doctor sniffed, and adjusted his suit jacket. "He might not respond to me, either. But it never does hurt to try..." He slowly kneeled down to meet the small life form eye-to-eye. "Hello, I'm the Doctor, and this is Clara. What's your name?"

He blinked, and suddenly his large eyes became weary, telling tales of lost days and hardships. "My name was stripped from my memory but a sun's roll ago."

The Doctor's countenance became overrun with sadness and pity for this creature. "Oh, I am sorry. I'm so sorry." The Time Lord squinted then, glaring up at the ceiling as he thought. "Sun roll... Where have I heard that before? Common, sun roll, sun roll, sun roll, sun roll... Oh! Yes! That's a year, on your planet, a full sun's revolution? Oh, but that means you're-"

"I am from Kratxon."

"Oh, brilliant! A Kratxonite! One of the very last time-aware species, I haven't heard of you in years!" he gushed.

"Doctor?" Clara interjected then. "Does this mean he's the one- I mean, who stranded us all here?"

"Probably," he replied, "I mean, they absorb time energy, like- like humans consume tea! It's what they live on. It's what their entire society is built on. Isn't that right..."

The Kratxonite nodded once, and then spoke. "Now that the higher species have perished, we are scavengers, surviving on the last scraps of time energy to avoid extinction."

Clara gazed back to the black box. "So you did this, then. You isolated all the people who had the time energy so you could find them easier."

"Yes," the small life form confirmed. He pointed to the device that contained the swirling, colorful vortex. "That box was once the engine to my ship. I crashed here, on Sol III, just a few days ago. Now it is in disrepair, and I need time energy to fix it."

"And to sustain yourself," the Doctor added, gazing far down the hallway, as if tangled up in a particularly vivid daydream. Clara knew the feeling. She often had them- particularly this very specific one where she was falling, down and down and down, through a beautiful yet daunting cascading tunnel of light. Sometimes she could close her eyes and see it, if she was very tired or stressed.

The slender alien man stretched up against the door, in deep thought. The Kratxonite was silent as well, apparently just as unwilling to chat small talk as he was. (Was it really just Earth who tended to express platitudes?) When the Doctor's mouth finally moved, Clara almost didn't realize it until he was halfway through his sentence.

"-your ship? Show me your ship, Kratx. I might be able to give you a helping hand. I may call you Kratx, main't I?"

"Distasteful, but if you insist," Kratx voiced. "It is this way." He turned from them, and began plodding solid-footed down the hall. The Doctor and Clara glanced at each other. Almost simultaneously, they smiled ever so slightly and nodded, and made their way walking behind him.

She did a lot of sightseeing along the way, now taking time to absorb her surroundings, as they weren't running. She could tell that they were definitely in this small company's headquarters, mainly clued in by the plaque next to one of the doors they passed that read, "Ronald Arkland, CEO". Most of the other doors lead to meeting rooms, each numbered. The lights still seemed unwilling to stay on longterm, and now she knew that this was due to the stress of keeping the thirty-one here, separated from the rest of the population. As the small group passed a narrow floor-to-ceiling window at a corner, Clara gazed out. It was still the middle of the night, at most nearing one o'clock in the morning, but no later. As she arched her neck to take a quick glance to the silent streets below, she couldn't help but think how creepy it was, knowing you're practically the only ones on Earth.

She then turned towards the Doctor, and finally set about to really, properly studying him. If he was an alien, he sure didn't look it from an observer's perspective. To your everyday unaware human, (gosh, she had to say that now, didn't she?), he looked to be in his mid thirties, with a handsome face and great hair that couldn't go without mention. Maybe he'd be a business professional or a lawyer, they'd think, in that blue suit he was wearing. But Clara knew better than that. She shrugged the long overcoat closer around her, trying hard not to trip over the bottom of it trailing the floor. The Doctor might have looked human, but she could see how alien he really was in his mannerisms, in the way that he walked and how he carried himself.

The trio came upon an eerily familiar door, if only to Clara. She squinted to make sure she wasn't kidding herself. It was closed, but it was definitely THAT ONE...

"Doctor, this is where I first saw him," she said quietly. "You know, before you came in and dragged me away."

The Time Lord merely nodded, aware of the fact. He turned the copper nob with a flick of his wrist, opened the door for the two, Kratx and Clara, and stepped in behind them. The room was exactly as previously remembered. It was pitch black, the wall went back about 20 meters, but the ceiling wasn't that high. If this was were the Kratxonite's ship was, then it had to pretty small to fit in here.

After he reached into the pocket of the coat currently around her shoulders, (she wasn't expecting that one), the Doctor brought out his sonic screwdriver. He pushed the tiny button on the side and that high-pitched noise that always accompanied it rang out. She smiled, reassured by seeing his always confident face, if only in the blue light that glowed in a snug radius around them. Then, with a pop, the bulbs in the ceiling slowly flickered back to life. If only he could do that with _all_ the lights. With a triumphant "Ha!", he spun the screwdriver in his hand and put it back in his own suit pocket.

Clara leaned towards him. "That sonic screwdriver is your answer to everything, isn't it?" she whispered in his ear. Then her eyes drifted over to the corner of the room, which was, besides the rather amazing-looking capsule spaceship just sitting there, filled with boring filing cabinets. Her eyes widened with curiosity, and she practically leaped over there to take a closer look, dropping the long brown overcoat off her shoulders in the process. "This is your spaceship?" she asked Kratx.

A tiny smile crossed Kratx's thin orange lips, and he nodded his confirmation. "Yes, Clara. This is my ship." He gently rested a hand on its cool metal surface, and patted its side. "I have been stuck here trying to fix it for three days now, but it is very fragile."

Suddenly, she believed she understood. His ship... smaller than she expected, highly conical, with a hatch more than big enough for him to enter, it was highly damaged. Although it remained intact as far as she could see, there were also obvious signs of wear and tear; places where one could tell the black reflective metal had been scuffed to high heaven. And there was no telling what conditions were like inside the small capsule. So why would somebody with a ride like that try to scare away others by taking on the guise of a wild animal? "You were defending it," she realized. "Earlier, when I first came in here..." Kratx's face scrunched up a bit, like he was about to say something.

"Not really," the Doctor spoke up suddenly, and having already picked up his overcoat from the floor, stridden over with his hands in its pockets. "He was deciding whether or not to consume you."

The words echoed in Clara's mind as she glanced over to the short orange-faced, fox-eared Kratxonite in remorse, now unable to imagine the mild-mannered alien doing such a thing. But Kratx slouched in shame, stripping away any doubting thoughts she had.

"I admit, I was considering it," he mumbled, refusing to look at them. "So much has changed since The Great War In Time... We used to consume time energy traded to us by the travelers, the ones who were With Time. But now, no more honest time-aware species exist, save what was left of the Kratxonites."

"You're speaking in past tense," Clara noticed with a saddened frown. "What happened to them?"

Kratx's eyes darkened, as if reliving the horrors of his past. "We went to war," he said bluntly. "Petty war. All for the last resources. No more time energy is left, except for what little can be stripped by consuming whole life forms. That is why I disguised myself as a monster. I was too ashamed to be anything otherwise."

The Doctor, standing rigid next to Clara, seemed to be caught in his own personal nightmare as Kratx spoke. His face seemed to become years older in just the span of seconds, all jovial youth stripped away.

Clara slowly dropped to her knees, and rested a hand on Kratx's weary shoulder, upon the once-nice green embroidered garment he wore. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "I'm sorry you had to go through that. And I know that can never make up for anything you experienced, but know this: we care."

He glanced up. His eyes were a bit wet. "I am thankful that you two have brought me to, for once, tell the truth. I have been hiding under a lie for so long now, having to act stupid and uniformed for my own safety. And yet far away, I have a family, living safe, waiting for me to get back to them. Please, I beg for your help!"

As if this phrase was an 'on' switch, the Doctor snapped out of his brooding state and into action. "I need to peek inside your ship," he declared, stalking over to where it lay. He rapped his knuckles on its side, producing a deep echoey clanging noise. His face contorted into a mixture of one of those 'no, duh' faces, and what was possibly a knowing smirk. "Oh, does it sound big in here!" he exclaimed.

Clara bit her lip, trying not to laugh at his antics.

He bent over then, bringing his face mere centimeters from the Kratxonite's. "So, whatdya say, eh Kratx? Open 'er up!"

Kratx acknowledged him by taking from an inner pocket of his garment a small, perfect black sphere. Without words, he pressed his finger down lightly on it, opening a secret catch on its surface. He pressed harder, and four rounded triangular panels flipped out from the bottom of the sphere with a click. As the device began to glow a soft purple, he rested it against the middle of the front surface on the capsule. Suddenly, a ring of white lights flicked up around the triangular panels. A purple one appeared at the top of the ring and circled around multiple times, back and forth, like a futuristic combination lock. There was a beep. Kratx took the key away. And then the door split in half, opening to both sides with a hiss of steam.

The orange-faced alien stepped forwards into the spaceship. He looked back at the Doctor and Clara. "Watch your heads," he warned. "That door is not very tall."

Clara took one last glance at the Doctor before ducking her head and walking inside the Kratxonite's ship. "Wow..." she breathed, taking a look around. "Just how many spaceships are bigger on the inside?"

"Not that many," the Doctor answered, coming in behind her. "And this is by no means infinite, not like the TARDIS. It's big, though."

Standing side by side, they observed the scenery around, the curves and harsh angles of an alien spacecraft, alien for both of them this time. Directly in front of them was a rather large control bay, all silver metal and buttons that circled around a very solid looking chair, complete with a full restraining harness. There were signs of damage on the controls, like scorch marks and wires lying bear, but besides that it seemed in working condition. Directly above was a massive interactive glass display, chipped, that showed all the local star clusters in the neighborhood. It spanned from curved wall to curved wall. Every few seconds the screen would blink and sputter, trying hard to remain on. Lining the clinical white walls and complimenting its curve were more chairs, much alike to the captain's chair, also with restraining harnesses. There was a fair amount of rubble strewn on the floor, but from goodness knows where. Two corridors stretched out from the main room on opposite sides from each other.

"This isn't just for one person," the Doctor stated.

"No," Kratx shook his head, "It is for my family. I promised back two sun's rolls ago I would come for them, escape from Kratxon and the warring zone. But I was caught, I stole this ship. So they locked me up and... and stole my true name from my memory. I cannot even begin to remember it. It was a miracle I was able to escape at all."

Clara tried to smile. "When you get to your family, they can tell you your name."

"That is my hope," Kratx nodded. "But I need time energy first, and I am not willing to kill to get it. Not now. I will not fall like the others."

After this comment, the ship fell silent. Everyone began doing their own business, which varied. The Doctor walked around the perimeter of the large main room, glancing at the wall displays and taking a peek down the corridor to the left. Clara checked out the star map above her head, picking out the few constellations she could recognize. And the Kratxonite himself had hobbled over to the curved row of buttons to check on a few things.

"There's some brilliant technology in here..." the Doctor said, hushed.

The Kratxonite smiled, the first genuine smile Clara had seen the whole time. "Yes, we have benefited from trade of ideas with your people, _Time Lord_. While we might not have developed the technology of linking an alternate dimension to an exterior shell first, we did develop ours from scratch."

The ancient man smirked. "You figured it out, then."

"What?" Clara asked, confused.

"His people," Kratx clarified. "The Time Lords. The highest of the time-aware species. They actually developed time travel, and then tried to keep it all for themselves..."

"Not all of us," the Doctor quickly interrupted, arms crossed.

"Of course, that never would work," he continued, unfazed. "Due to their frequency on Kratxon for trade, my people began to immediately recognize them by their high concentration of time energy. That is mainly why I hesitated from consuming you in the first place, I am sorry to say... Thought if I could find a Time Lord, all my problems would be solved," he shrugged. "But look at my luck, instead of one Time Lord, I find two!"

The Doctor's brows shot up past his hairline. "Ex-excuse me? What did you say?"

Clara shook her head. "Sorry, but I think you've got me confused, Kratx. I'm human, born and bred. Not a Time-whatever that was..."

"Time Lord," the two aliens said simultaneously.

"Fine, Time Lord! And what the hell are you doing?"

Clara attempted to back away from the Doctor, who was trying to push a stethoscope against her chest. (Where'd he even get a stethoscope, anyways?) After a bit of struggling, she finally relented, and let him place it just above her right breast. He stood there for a second, listening through the earpieces. A moment later, his face fell.

"Yep, human," he confirmed, trying hard to mask the disappointment in his voice. "Just one heart."

"What was that about?" she asked slowly.

"I apologize greatly," said Kratx. "You were covered in time energy, saturated in it. More than him. And so I thought that maybe-"

"No, hold on!" the Doctor interrupted. "How is that possible?" He swiped out his sonic screwdriver, and took a quick scan with one flick of the wrist. Looking at the device in his hands, he glanced up to Clara. "Are you sure there's nothing you haven't told me, Clara? Nothing at all?"

"Of course there's things I haven't told you," she muttered.

The Time Lord's eyes narrowed. "Don't get cheeky. Just, don't. I'm completely serious."

She nodded her head fervently. "Yes! I'm sure! Why does it matter so much?"

He sighed. "Clara... According to these readings, you've got millions of years of time energy burning through your veins. And that shouldn't be possible for anyone, let alone a Time Lord. Even I don't have that much."

Clara starred into his eyes for a good long while. The sorrow in his was almost palpable, and she could tell that what he had previously believed about her had brought him great hope, only to be crushed back into the ground. She didn't know what he was thinking, or what had to have happened in his past for him to act like this; he was so broken, but so very _alive_, so determined. Deep, hidden away in the convincing facade of his youth, she could find a sliver of darkness, that dark, desolate, hopeless spark of black in his irises. They were very old, the only thing that broke his youthful guise. He had to have experienced something bone shaking, something that changed the very course of his life forever. But what she also found reflected in his deep brown eyes was kindness, and the want to help people. Perhaps that's why he called himself "the Doctor".

"Most of the systems are operating quite well," Kratx voiced, interrupting the sheet of silence that had enveloped the two. Clara shuffled, moving a few meters away from the ancient man. "I have checked everything, and it seems now the only thing stopping a quick flight is the lack of time energy."

Clara rubbed her lips together unconsciously, spreading lip-gloss around. "What about the engine?"

"That is easy enough to solve... given enough time energy, a new engine can be artificially produced within minutes. But it seems it may take a good while to find any."

The Doctor, caught in a daze, reached into his breast pocket. Clara glanced over, and watched as he took out a single silver key on a leather cord. As he starred down at it, she could have sworn she saw a tear glint in the corner of his eye before he snuffed and balled the key up in his hand. He blinked. "That's not entirely true," he said.

"What is that?" she asked.

"A key. A key to the TARDIS. It's been all through time and space, everywhere, it's covered in energy."

"Not as much as a living creature," Kratx interjected.

"No," he continued. "More. More than a living creature." He began pacing around the room, circling around the circular control panel. "Right, so time energy! You, Kratx, are in need of an infinite source, OR... at very least, a near infinite source- the only infinite source is the void, yet it's impossible to contain every single scrap of that, and trust me when I say the Time Lords tried... But! Time Lords! They didn't just travel through time, oh no, they were clever. They found out how to cross into parallel universes as well. I used to do it a lot before... well, before the war happened, yes. No more Time Lords meant no more passing into those parallel worlds. And what's more, the walls of the universes have been unstable lately, new universes spawning off in the blink of an eye... Some of them have never even seen time travel. The time energy's pure. Now, if an object like this," he held up the silver key, "that had traveled forwards and backwards all across time somehow managed to cross into a universe like that... all that untouched time energy would converge on it like flies swarming a corpse."

"Pure time energy..." Clara breathed.

"Exactly!" the Doctor grinned, stopping his pacing madness to stand between her and the Kratxonite. "Never been used before!"

Kratx reached his hand out towards the glinting silver object in renewed hope. "But that means- that means I can go home!"

The Doctor looked him directly in the eye. "Take it. Take it, Kratx. Run to them. Find your family, and never let go."

Kratx's foxlike ears quirked up for a second in a moment of hesitation. And then he placed his hand in his, taking the tiny glimmer of hope that had once been the Doctor's and making it his. He held it in his small, smooth hands like a treasure. He closed his eyes. "I never thought," he breathed, "I would ever have this opportunity again. I always did love doing this..."

He cupped the key in his hands, and gently blew on it. The silver object began glowing gold, ever so slightly at first. What could have almost been dust wafted in the air around it, twinkling with that same golden glint. Kratx grinned, and lifted his smiling face up to the Doctor and Clara. Ever so slowly, the key began to disintegrate in his hands, its molecules twirling into the air to join with the cloud of golden dust. A few seconds longer, and it was completely consumed. The lone Kratxonite drew a short intake of breath as he stilled, now suspending a fiery ball of pure time in between his hands.

Clara gasped at the beauty of it. It was so chaotic and unbounded, a swirling mass of golden tendrils, all snaking around each other in a perfect labyrinth.

"Oh... That is bea-utiful!" the Doctor whispered, as he lowered to a crouch next to Kratx. "You are brilliant, you know that?"

"People have always told myths and legends of the Time Lords," the Kratxonite breathed, the fiery mass of time reflected in his eyes, "of the Lonely Wanderers and the Rulers of Eternity... What many have not heard about, however, are the Kratxonites. The Gifted Ones, the Keepers of the Energy of Time."

He clasped his hands shut, collapsing all the time energy in on itself. When he opened them again, it had disappeared. There was nothing left.

"Where did that all go?" Clara asked him, still in awe.

Kratx smiled wildly in glee. "I stored it in my body for future use. I can feel it there, burning in my veins; its fires could last for nearly a lifetime! And whenever I need, I can summon it back up. That is the treasure of the Kratxonites... Others may travel through time at whim, but we are the true carriers. Now, let us get this ship working!"

He dove under one of the main control panels, and immediately got busy.

* * *

_Next chapter..._

_Clara blinked once. "I guess what I'm meaning to ask is- just how many others are there out there? Aliens?"_

_"Would you like to see for yourself?" the Doctor suddenly blurted out in one breath. "I mean- would you like to go with me? Quick trip into the universe?"_

_Confused, Clara gazed at him. "I don't- why would you ask me?"_

_He took a hand out of his pocket, and gently laid it on her shoulder. She glanced down at it, then back at him. "Because, Clara," he said, "you were so brave, and so brilliant, and your foot is still in the doorway."_

* * *

**Thanks for reading! :-) Just one more chapter of this mini plot line before we move forwards in the story! **

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:  
Just 35 days! We're getting closer, everyone! My money's on the trailer being released on the 23rd of October, one month away. We'll see...**


	5. The Empty Planet: Redemption

**Last chapter in this mini-arc! It's a shorter one, but the next chapter will be pretty darn long. (I just can't find a better cut off point for it than what I have...)  
Anyways, a big shout out to my wonderful ****reviewers, and all those who favorited/followed: Damon's Charlene, moviegal102, Peaceful Sunrise, DreamonAlina, and inspibrain101. Seriously, you guys are fantastic. :D **

* * *

Chapter Five

_The Empty Planet: Redemption_

About ten minutes later, everything was beginning to come together. Kratx had summoned just enough time energy from within him to stimulate the creation of a new engine and sustain a trip back to his family, with enough left over to last him for years. Clara helped out by moping up the rubble that had settled on the floor from the crash, and assisting the Kratxonite as he repaired the broken wires in the console. The Doctor, meanwhile, had spent his time fidgeting with the star map on the ceiling, in an attempt to figure out why it was glitching so much. Clara silently laughed as she watched him fuss with the system; it was kind of like watching a two year old building a block tower, and their frustration when it all falls over.

She shook her head, and turned back towards her new Kratxonite friend. "Kratx, do you have that engine working?"

His small orange face popped up from under one of the floor panels, much in the fashion of a groundhog. "Nearly, no worries! Just one..." he grunted... "more... KICK-" There was a loud clang from somewhere below- "should do it." He gasped for air, and grabbed at the edge of the floor panel, hanging for dear life. "If I can help it... I would like to never do that again."

"I don't think that should be a problem," the Doctor spoke up suddenly. "Look at this ship! Good as new. I think she's ready for flight, whatdya say?"

A saddened smile crossed his face. "That would be goodbye," he said.

"But sometimes, every once in a while, a goodbye can be the start of so, much more," Clara told him. His sad smile grew into a hopeful, relaxed one. His eyes gleamed.

"I will miss you, Clara. You are a very nice human."

Clara grinned, and bent down to speak with him eye to eye. "And you are a very, very kind Kratxonite."

Kratx took her hand in his and touched it to each shoulder, in what she guessed was a customary farewell tradition. "I will tell stories of you among my family," he told her. "That is the highest honor anyone can have."

He turned to the Time Lord next. "Thank you, Doctor."

The Doctor's lips turned up into a weak smile. "It's my pleasure. Coming, Clara?"

She frowned, and turned around to see him already heading for the doors that would lead to the outside world. Reluctantly she followed, but saddened to leave the spaceship that would take her new friend home. Before she reached the gateway to the exterior, Kratx called back to her.

"Clara! I will disable the temporal separator that brought you here as I leave!"

Her head swooped around, and a bit of her still-damp hair flung in the air towards her back. A smile ran from check to check as she took one last glimpse at the spaceship and her friend, who was sitting in the captain's chair, ready for flight.

"Thank you, Kratx. I'll see you around."

His grin wavered, confused. "Really? What makes you think that?"

Her face grew more puzzled as well. "Honestly, I'm not quite sure," she told him, and her eyebrows nearly weaved together. Her lips curved back up into smile. "Good luck!"

Clara ducked her head, and stepped backwards out of the spacecraft, into the storage room. She found the Doctor standing behind her. The second she was out on solid ground, the doors slid closed and fused back into one metal surface. Loose papers began to flitter around them, and rings of pure energy began to spin around the ship, gently lifting it up off the floor. The roar of its engines was incredible for its size; blotting out every other noise. There was a flash of white light, which forced her to raise an arm to cover her eyes. And then it was gone.

There was a sudden blast of cool air as things began to settle down in the room. Everything went silent. Clara gasped, letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding. She ran out of the room and down the hallway, to the full-length window she had passed earlier. Her arms hit the clear glass in desperation, and she gazed out.

Far below, on the central streets of the city, masses of people were celebrating the New Year, lit up by the sparkling lights and glamour of Times Square. Large groups clumped on the sidewalks, and cars drove up and down the roads and highways abroad. Men and women stood on the balconies of hotel rooms and apartments, drinking wine and having a good time. New York City was no longer empty. She squinted, seeing a large screen down by Times Square showing other various New Year's celebrations in London, Japan, China, Russia... The WORLD was no longer empty. All thirty-one that had been separated through time had been safely returned, as Kratx had promised. She grinned wildly, as for once everything had gone perfectly okay.

She could hear the Doctor step up behind her. There were still a lot of questions she had to ask him, but those could wait until later. As if there was somehow an unspoken understanding between the two, she silently followed him down the hall, into the lobby, and into the elevator, where they waited quietly for their floor. She glanced over towards him, and noticed he was carrying the old scraped engine Kratx had attached in the electrical closet. The other thing that she noticed was the broody expression drawn on his face, and the hand thrust into his pocket that complimented it. While he may not have been human, Clara was well assured that expression held much of the same meaning on Earth as anywhere. She sighed.

"Why so upset?"

At first, he didn't answer. So Clara left it there, not willing to push any further. But then, just as the elevator dinged, alerting them that they had reached their floor, the Doctor finally spoke.

"That key I gave Kratx... used to belong to an old friend of mine." He stepped out of the elevator without another word. Clara stood there, truly unsure of what say or think. Quickly, she rushed out of the elevator behind him, before the doors could shut in her face.

She progressed down the hallway, following the squeak of his trainers a ways in front of her. The walls looked significantly familiar, yet surprisingly distant in memory, as if hundreds of hours had passed while she was in Kratx's spaceship. When she passed into a large office space, she instantly knew where she was, however. The blue box, the TARDIS, had proved it. She watched as the Doctor quietly slipped his spare key into the lock and turned it, before slipping stealthily inside. Worried he was going to leave her there, she ran after him. She grabbed onto the smooth metal of the door handle, and was about to push it in, when she heard a pencil drop. Immediately, she froze.

"Is someone there?"

Clara glanced around, and saw a young woman of African American descent with her hair in a high bun, working at one of the desks in front of the large side window. The woman did not bother to turn around, apparently too concentrated on her work. Her heartbeat stilled. "Just me," she replied, intending to be vague to escape any trouble. "Long shift?"

"Yeah," the woman breathed. "I'm working double-time to keep my rent. Great view, though."

Clara looked out the window through the corner of her eye, seeing a high view of the Times Square celebrations. She hesitantly nodded, wanting to get back into the TARDIS before the Doctor got impatient and left. "Quite an eye opener..."

The young woman at the desk spun her chair around, and Clara could now see half of the nameplate sitting on the side of her desk, Sari. "You're English?" the American questioned her.

"Yes."

Her eyes then landed on the TARDIS behind her. A brow raised in surprise as she looked at it sitting there, neatly in the corner behind Clara. "Since when did that box get here?"

Clara smiled, and shrugged, suddenly remembering that for her, it just spontaneously appeared. "Since now." Seeing her opportunity, she turned around and pushed open the blue paneled door, and for the second time that day entered the bigger-on-the-inside time machine.

The Doctor was waiting for her by the console. The second she had closed the door, he flipped a small lever down and the ship was once more catapulted into turbulence. Clara expected it this time, however, and only needed to hold onto the railing as she slowly and carefully made her way to the main platform. There was no chat while the TARDIS flew, however, unlike the last flight... (In which she had yelped in surprise of it all and listened to him describe gleefully about what the ship was and what the acronym "TARDIS" meant...) In fact, if it weren't for the clicks and groans of the time ship, Clara might have doubted her hearing was adequate.

The Time Lord shot only a fleeting glance her way as he ran around piloting his ship, but it was one that she hardly imagined she'd forget. It was a mixture of hurt and confusion etched upon his face, with maybe just the slightest bit of hope. But hope for what? Why look at her like that?

The TARDIS landed with a final lurch, one that nearly sent Clara's stomach tumbling. She looked to the Doctor. He nodded towards the door. With a saddened frown, she plodded down the metal grating and swung the door open to reveal the night-lights of New York City. A few more steps revealed her to be right where she started, in the same dark alley-way filled with smelly dumpster bins. She crossed her arms to protect herself from the cold of the night.

"I should probably get back to my Aunt and Uncle," she said, when she saw a tall skinny shadow appear next to her. "I was supposed to be here visiting them." Her head turned.

The Doctor, currently standing at her shoulder, nodded. "Yeah."

Clara's gaze wavered. "That's all you're gonna say? 'Yeah'?" The man didn't answer. She sighed, and continued. "Saying as I'm likely never gonna see you again, I might as well ask- since aliens exist, why don't we notice them?"

"Well... That's the human race for you. Always ready to deny the unbelievable."

"I didn't."

"I know," he replied.

Clara blinked once. "I guess what I'm meaning to ask is- just how many others are there out there? Aliens?"

"Would you like to see for yourself?" the Doctor suddenly blurted out in one breath. "I mean- would you like to go with me? Quick trip into the universe?"

Confused, Clara gazed at him. "I don't- why would you ask me?"

He took a hand out of his pocket, and gently laid it on her shoulder. She glanced down at it, then back at him. "Because, Clara," he said, "you were so brave, and so brilliant, and your foot is still in the doorway."

She scrunched her brows and threw her head down, only to find he was right. Her right foot WAS still standing in the TARDIS, her left on the alley's concrete. She swallowed, now mulling this offer over. "And you would drop me back off at this exact place, right? Same time?"

He nodded, with a small smile beginning to creep over his lips. Clara's eyes twinkled, and she held out her hand for him to grab.

"Well then, Time Lord... I think you've got yourself a deal. Show me the stars!"

In one fluid motion, he grasped her hand, and together they ran back into the TARDIS. A wild grin spread from ear to ear as Clara bounded up to the main platform, where the console with all the levers was. She was going on an adventure. A single tear fell from her eye, a tear of joy. As she engrained every detail of the beautifully alien console to her memory, she suddenly became aware of the Doctor asking her something.

"Sorry, what was that?" she asked.

"Is there anything you'd like to see?"

She sighed, placing a finger to her lip in thought. "Oh, I wouldn't know... How 'bout you pick somewhere for me?"

The Doctor's eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he whispered almost unintelligently to himself. "Oh!" he shouted then. "How about Mars? Close enough to Earth but completely new, I've been meaning to go there for a while! Martian surface however, we'll need spacesuits..."

Clara leaned up with her elbows down on the console. "Sounds good to me. We off?"

"To the stars!" he grinned, finishing his last few preflight checks. He slammed off the hand break, and with a groan of the TARDIS' rotor, they were in flight.

In flight towards the red planet...

* * *

_Next chapter..._

_"Is that a space base? Like, an actual proper space base?"_

_The Doctor popped up on her left. "I believe so, Clara... That might be an old Martian way point."_

_Clara squinted, taking a closer look at the shuttle on the pad. The design seemed VERY familiar... "But hold on! That shuttle looks like the ones we have!"_

_His brows scrunched down. "That's- OH!" he shouted, and thrust his hands out in front of him. "Stupid me! You're completely right. That's an Earth base, then. I think one of the first."_

_The young woman turned so she could look at him in excited curiosity. "When is this?" she asked. "What year?"_

_"I'd say around... mid to late 2000s? 2050, 2070, somewhere around there. I can't tell exactly. My senses must be getting a bit rusty..."_

_Clara starred back down at the base, soaking in the wonder of a human settlement on an alien world. "But that's... that's so close! That's only about 50 years away!"_

_"The human race's early steps into the cosmos, right here," the Doctor enthused. She silently laughed at how his voice always seemed to go up half an octave when he was excited about something. "Oh, how much I have to show you, Clara!" he said then. "All the beauty of the universe!"_

* * *

**In a way, this chapter was a sort of interlude. I'd bet most all of you can figure out where the Doctor and Clara are off to now... ;-)... **

**If anyone wonders, I have this story pre-written all the way to chapter sixteen so far. It's hitting about 70,000 words right now. At it's full length it will be thirty-two chapters, so I've just passed the halfway mark.  
In the coming weeks, I will likely not be updating so quickly. Expect Wednesday updates.**

**But enough of me; what about that Doctor Who 50th celebration video? Awesome, yeah? I did catch sight of all the Doctors, even Paul MgGann and Colin Baker, who are usually forgotten. Colin's back was turned though, so it was hard to see him on first viewing. I also spotted Rose with her back turned in one of those last snippets, (heard her voice, too), and I think I spotted a reflection of Susan when it showed Clara. I watched that thing about six times, and I still can't get enough of the awesomeness! Gahhh I just can't wait 'till it's November 23rd!**

**#SaveTheDay (50th) Countdown:  
34 days!**

**Have an amazing day, everyone!**


	6. The Waters Of Mars: Meeting The Captain

**Thanks to my reviewers and those who favorited/followed: LeilaTheGalaxyDefender, Peaceful Sunrise, Damon's Charlene, moviegal102, tre1er, Dex-El of Krypton, HelenAngusFlos, and atwistedconundrum. I bestow all of you with virtual hugs! :D**

**I hope you enjoy the first chapter of The Waters Of Mars!**

* * *

Chapter Six

_The Waters Of Mars: Meeting The Captain_

The very first thing Clara saw as she carefully stepped out of the TARDIS onto the Martian surface was light. Bright, blinding light. It took a few moments of squinting before her eyes got accustomed to the new environment. As her vision adjusted, she gasped at the sight ahead.

"The red planet," the Doctor exclaimed cheerfully, stepping out beside her in his spacesuit.

_So now I know firsthand why they call it that_, she thought, gazing out in wonder. A flat landscape seeming to be stark of all life stretched out before her for a vast distance, pebbled by stones and large rocks, all of a deep red color. There were at least a dozen craters spread along the horizon, some possibly as big as cities. The atmosphere was thinner than she had expected, so the sun easily glared through and glinted off the visor of her helmet. Off beyond in front of her was a small ridge that hid unknown mysteries behind it.

Clara starred over at the ridge. "Is there any life here?" she asked.

"Yep. Look to your right, those mountains back over there- you see?" The Doctor's voice echoed in her ear, as if he was talking to her through a tin can. The spacesuits they were both wearing might have been laiden with futuristic technology, but their intercom systems hardly produced sonorous sounds.

Slowly, Clara turned around to look. Spacesuits were also quite bulky to move around in, she discovered, and she lost the advantage of having peripheral vision, but other than that she didn't mind being enveloped in the tight suit. She was more glad than ever that she wasn't clastrophobic like her father was. Immediately, she found the mountains he was referring to, the imposing range to the south east of them, and nodded.

"If you look close you can see the very remnants of an ancient Martian civilization. They used to have a grand city, maybe... Oh, maybe ten kilometers or so from where we're standing. The Ice Warriors, they were called."

Clara's lips curved up into a smile, as she mentally placed a grand alien city under the mountains. She found that imagining what their Martian home could have been like was actually quite fun. Did they have schools or hospitals of some sort? Did the women leave their homes to shop and gossip with friends? What might an alien species do for fun, in fact? She wondered if they ever looked up to the sky at night and saw Earth, and speculated if there were life or not on that planet.

"You sure seem to know your Martian facts," she told him with a small laugh.

"This brings back memories, yeah..."

The Doctor turned his head and smiled that dazzling smile of his, which embarrassingly enough for Clara made her stomach flip-flop. She could tell how much he loved showing off to her, and telling his stories, though. It was a complete change of attitude from the broody, silent Doctor she had to deal with returning to his time machine after helping Kratx return home. She still wondered why he was like that.

"There's the Gusev Crater, a kilometer and beyond that ridge," the Doctor said, pointing to the ridge Clara had first seen. "Back when the Ice Warriors used to be primarily nomadic, a good thousand or so years ago, there was a large clan living there. The Erythraeums... They weren't very humorous though, didn't even take a joke," he mumbled, looking to be caught up in a particularly vivid memory of goodness knows what. His glazed-over countenance was pretty amusing, however.

"What about now, though?" she asked. "Are there any cities or settlements still out there?"

He shook his head. "I doubt it. The atmosphere's gone thin. The surface's become too cold for them, and most have migrated away. If you like, we could walk over there and take a peek."

Clara's eyes gleamed like stars through her helmet, her smile almost more dazzling than the sun. "I would love that!"

The two turned towards the crater ridge and began walking. Clara lightly kicked the small rocks as she went, blowing up red dust. The dust floated up and around her due to the surface having a bit less gravity than Earth did. A few times along the way, she would stop to observe particularly odd looking rocks, which upon closer inspection were not rocks at all, but most likely aged scraps of Martian life. Then the Doctor would give multiple possibilities as to what it could be, and what clan it was probably from. After talking for a few minutes and gaining a decent rest- for walking in a spacesuit was a good deal more difficult than it seemed, with the extra weight of oxygen tanks wearing her down- they would begin walking again.

After what seemed like only a few minutes, the Doctor and Clara reached the base of the ridge. The Time Lord helped his new human friend climb up the side of the steep crater rim, giving her a steady arm to hang on to as she found suitable foot holds to balance on. Just before they reached the top, she stopped for breath suddenly.

"You all right?" he asked in concern. "Any time you'd like, tell me, and we can return to the TARDIS."

"No," she gasped, bending over and grabbing at her midsection. "I'm fine, this ridge is just steep, and my dress is wadded up in my spacesuit. It's settled weird."

She rolled her eyes at the sound of the Doctor's laughter through the intercom, and then brushed herself up. Very carefully, she tried climbing the rest of the way up, determined to finish the last few meters by herself. Her reward was brought when she finally poked her head up over the edge of the rim, and saw the sight below.

Sunlight shone down upon a mighty base on the crater floor. It had five smaller outlying domes extending out from a central one, all made out of the same glass triangular panels and connected by long steel walkways. There was a sixth walkway that led to a shuttle pad, with a grand spacecraft parked upon it. Clara's jaw dropped open.

"Is that a space base? Like, an actual proper space base?"

The Doctor popped up on her left. "I believe so, Clara... That might be an old Martian way point."

Clara squinted, taking a closer look at the shuttle on the pad. The design seemed VERY familiar... "But hold on! That shuttle looks like the ones we have!"

His brows scrunched down. "That's- OH!" he shouted, and thrust his hands out in front of him. "Stupid me! You're completely right. That's an Earth base, then. I think one of the first."

The young woman turned so she could look at him in excited curiosity. "When is this?" she asked. "What year?"

"I'd say around... mid to late 2000s? 2050, 2070, somewhere around there. I can't tell exactly. My senses must be getting a bit rusty..."

Clara starred back down at the base, soaking in the wonder of a human settlement on an alien world. "But that's... that's so close! That's only about 50 years away!"

"The human race's early steps into the cosmos, right here," the Doctor enthused. She silently laughed at how his voice always seemed to go up half an octave when he was excited about something. "Oh, how much I have to show you, Clara!" he said then. "All the beauty of the universe!"

At that moment, Clara caught sight of something moving behind the rocks. She immediately flinched and yanked on his arm with the subconscious expectation that something would reach out and attack him. "Doctor, behind you!"

A skinny metal arm reached out and poked him in the back with a gun, just below the shoulder blades.

"Rotate slowly," its tinny electronic voice commanded. The Doctor froze, and slowly started to turn around.

"Clara, put your hands up," he told her, doing the same. Sitting in front of them on very large treads was a small robot, a drone. It had one eye- likely a camera- encased in a large plastic sphere which acted as its head. For a robot, it was pretty complex. The metal iris flexed, its view zooming in on the pair, and it continued to point the gun.

"You are under arrest for trespassing. Gadget gadget."

~8~

**Twenty minutes later**

It took a while for Clara to peel herself out of the bright orange spacesuit as commanded. Also, it very well didn't help that she had to do so in an airlock that she had no proof was actually fully sealed, while a worryingly futuristic gun was being pointed at her head by the robot. The Doctor tried reasoning with it to let them go multiple times already, but with no luck. It was already certain that somebody inside the base severely wished to meet them. Whether or not this would mean trouble was as of yet unknown.

After a few minutes of fiddling with the straps on the sides, and with the Time Lord's help, she finally slipped her feet out of the spacesuit, and violently kicked it aside.

"I'm sick of that thing!" she muttered, and crossed her arms. "Why are they doing this, anyways?"

"They think we're trespassing. Which we are, really," the Doctor answered with a shrug.

Clara narrowed her eyes at him. "Not helping our case there."

"Sorry."

Just then, the inner airlock door hissed. Their heads whipped around to see it beginning to open to their left. Clara stepped back as if her foot hit a hot coal, almost colliding into the Doctor in the snug space. An older woman was revealed standing behind the door, her blonde hair held up in a thin pony. She was wearing navy green cargo pants, with a shirt to match, and sturdy combat boots. Her hand was held at her belt, right at her gun holster.

"Step inside," she instructed with a frown. "Slowly."

The Doctor and Clara glanced at each other for just a fleeting moment before raising their hands over their head and stepping out from the airlock into the base. In front of them was a center area with five separate workstations, all outfitted with monitors and seats. Surrounding the walls, there were plenty of cubbies and storage bins carrying food, tools, and goodness knows what else. To their right there was a glass-sliding window with a computer and dozens of controls behind. Besides the woman who had met them at the door, there were four others standing in the central base, a young woman in red with dark hair, a man wearing a blue shirt standing very close next to her, another woman shuffling around them in a navy jumpsuit, and a young man- who almost looked to be barely out of college- sitting at the central work station with electronics up to his elbows.

They walked out to the center of the room. The woman in the jumpsuit moved over to the man covered in electrodes, and they began whispering, making wary glances towards them ever so often. Their small chat was interrupted when the robot that had intercepted the time travelers rolled up next to them. In the corner of her eye, (it really was nice being out of those spacesuits, you got back your peripheral vision, which was ever so handy), Clara saw the Doctor lower his hands, so she did the same.

The older woman pulled her gun on them. "State your names, ranks, and intention," she said in monotone.

Beat. The Doctor licked his teeth and swallowed before responding.

"The Doctor," he answered, "Doctor. Fun."

The woman nodded towards Clara, but kept her gun trained on the Doctor's head, presumedly sensing that he was the main authority in their relationship. It was an assumption that, while not wrong, still annoyed her a bit. "You too, miss. Name."

She kept her eyes locked on her. "Clara, Clara Oswald," she told her, voice growing in strength with every word. "I don't mean any harm, I'm with him!"

Just then, she could hear a door swish open, and a dark skinned man wearing the same green colored jumpsuit as one of the women skid into the central base. "What the hell?" he exclaimed, peeking in through the openings in the wall. He ran out into the center of the room "It's a man. A man and a girl. A man and a girl on Mars. How?"

"Hey. Hey, I'm an adult!" Clara protested, as he crossed in front of her to stand next to the woman wearing the red shirt.

"They were wearing these things," the woman in the jumpsuit said then, returning into the room carrying the Doctor and Clara's orange spacesuits. "I have never seen anything like it." Clara noted that, although she spoke perfect English, her accent was German.

The dark skinned man crossed his arms. "What did Mission Control say?"

"They're out of range for ten hours with the solar flares."

"If we could cut the chat, everyone," the older woman instructed. It was already quite clear from the body language of her and the others that she was the one in command.

The Doctor chose this opportune moment to open his gob. "Actually, chat's second on my list, the first being gun pointed at Clara and I's heads. Which then puts our heads second and chat third, I think. Gun, heads, chat, yeah. I hate lists. But you could hurt someone with that thing. Just put it down."

"Oh, you'd like that," she said, unfazed.

The Time Lord paused for a second. "Can you find me someone who wouldn't?"

The woman froze in her spot, starring into their eyes for a good long time, the Doctor's first and Clara's second. "Why should I trust you two?"

_Because he's a Time Lord who travels through time and space, and while I barely know anything about him, I do know that he is good and can help you, and I'm just a woman from London, year 2000, who is completely innocent and honestly didn't know she would be landing foot in a time machine when she woke up that morning_, Clara thought. She did not say anything, however.

The Doctor did not break his stance either. "Because I give you my word," he finally replied. "And forty million miles away from home, my word is all you've got. Also, Clara's under my responsibility. You don't do anything to her, you hear?"

The older woman hesitated, but finally sighed and lowered her weapon. "Keep Gadget covering them," she said, slipping the gun back into the holster at her hip.

"Gadget gadget."

Clara crossed her arms, and raised a brow at the man in the blue suit with the gravity defying hair beside her. "_Your_ responsibility? Really?"

"Yes, really!" he replied. "You're only here because of me, and I'm not about to let them walk all over you, so watch your back. Holler, if you need."

He began to run off towards the computer controls to their right. Clara's jaw clenched, and she ran after him, grabbing him by the shoulder. "I don't like the way that thing's looking at me..." she admitted, pointing at the robot, Gadget.

The Doctor shoved his hands down into his suit pockets. "Oh, it's just a robot," he scoffed, and walked over to check it out. The man with the electronic controls sitting in his lap and the electrodes and wires stuck to his hands cast him a warning look to keep back. The Time Lord smirked. "Ah, I see, so you control that thing. Auto-glove response, isn't it?"

The young man didn't smile back, but demonstrated the controls anyways. "You got it. To the right." He twisted his right hand.

"Gadget gadget," the robot voiced, while turning right.

"And to the left." He twisted his left hand, and the robot turned towards the left.

The Doctor winced as sparks arced from the machine. "It's a bit flimsy," he noted.

"Not that much," Clara muttered, and turned to the Doctor. "It survived on the surface."

The Doctor's brows catapulted up past his spiked hairline, and he nodded in mocked understanding. "Ah, so now you're defending it."

"Well, it's true!"

"Gadget gadget."

"Does it have to keep saying that?" the alien time traveler sighed.

The young man glanced up at him with a frown. "I think it's funny."

"I hate funny robots," the Doctor grimaced.

Just then, a voice came through the com system without any warning, nearly making Clara jump. It was female, and the sound quality was nowhere near perfect.

"Excuse me, boss," the unknown voice said from somewhere else on the base. "Computer log says we've got two extra people on site. How's that possible?"

The older woman took a small device, likely a communicator from her belt, and brought it to her lips. "Keep the Biodome closed," she ordered. "And when using open coms, you call me Captain."

"Yeah, but who are they?" the voice protested, before she pushed a button on the communicator's side and slid it back in her belt. Silence fell over the crowd.

Clara cleared her throat rather noisily, and glanced over at the Doctor. His expression was hard to read for her, and he shrugged. Meanwhile, the older woman crossed the main room of the base, stopping when she reached her workstation at the center. She turned around very quickly to look at her crew.

"Where's Ed?"

"He's- he's putting the suit I wore outside for repairs back into storage, Captain," the young man in blue, a Russian, said. The captain looked over at him.

"Next time, Yuri, you'll put away your own spacesuit," she told him, and then turned to call the German woman in the navy jumpsuit. "Would you contact him and tell him to hurry, please?"

The German woman nodded, and immediately swiped out a communicator identical to the one the captain had used earlier. She slid the glass pane at the side open and stepped into the other room to speak privately. The Doctor began exploring around the room and checking out all of the controls with much enthusiasm, but with limits, of course. Clara felt just the slightest bit awkward standing there in the base. Nearly everybody around her was a stranger, save her new alien suit-wearing friend. And really, even he was still a stranger. As she stood there, she marveled at how things were taken care of in the Mars base. Everything was like clockwork; the captain would request something and the crew would do it, each different member pitching in exactly where they were needed with no argument and no confusion on how they could help. It was very efficient; she could say that for sure.

She stepped up to the young man who controlled Gadget, a little hesitantly, but curious. He seemed to not notice her casting a shadow over him until she spoke.

"How many are there on this base?"

He did a double take, and then sighed. "There are nine of us. Ten including Gadget."

Clara tilted her head, impressed. She watched as he continued fiddling with the robot's controls, trying to fix something. "Okay. And you're all from different countries...?"

He stopped messing with the auto-gloves, and flipped his head up to her. "Are you seriously asking me that, or are you trying to play dumb?" he questioned her.

Clara became still, unsure as to what exactly he was insinuating about her. Luckily, she didn't have to answer, as it was at that moment the door behind her swished open again, and another voice of authority stepped into the room. Clara assumed this was the Ed the captain had been referring to earlier. He stepped into the middle of the group, clasped his hands, and spoke.

"So. The stories were true. A man and a woman, in our base. For a minute there, I thought this was just another _prank_," he said, that last statement aimed at the Russian man wearing the blue shirt, Yuri, who squirmed where he was standing.

"I was just having a little fun..." he quietly protested.

The newcomer in the base ignored him, and continued. "Now, let's think through this logically," he said, pacing around the room towards Clara and the Doctor, who had just stepped up next to her. "They can't be a World State flight, because we'd know about it. Therefore, they've got to be some of the independents, yeah?" He stopped moving and gawked at the Doctor. "Was it the Branson inheritance lot? They've talked about a Mars shot for years."

He quickly nodded. "Right, yes, okay, you got us. So, I'm the Doctor, this is Clara, and you are?"

The captain spoke up suddenly. "Oh, come on. We're the first off-world colonists in history," she scoffed. "Everyone on planet Earth knows who we are."

As if these words threw a spinning dagger into his chest, the Doctor's eyes grew wide as saucers in surprise. "You're the first?" he questioned. "The very first humans on Mars? Then this is-"

"Bowie Base One," the captain and he said in unison.

Clara's brows stitched together as she realized the significance of all of this. "We're literally imprinting ourselves in future history," she muttered to herself, and quieted to listen to what the Doctor was saying.

"Number one. Founded July 1st, 2058. Established Bowie Base One in the Gusev Crater." His eyes squinted as he turned to the captain for answers. "You've been here how long?"

"Seventeen months," she replied, as if it meant absolutely nothing of importance.

"2059," the Time Lord muttered. "It's 2059, right now. Oh! My head is so stupid... You're Captain Adelaide Brooke!" he exclaimed, pointing at the older woman who had first met them at the door. He turned to the others around him, and looked at the man in the worn jacket that had just entered the central base. "And Ed. You're Deputy Edward Gold."

Clara watched as he named off each and every one of the remaining Bowie Base One crewmembers. The Doctor pointed at the dark skinned man who had run in shortly after they arrived. "Tarak Ital, MD." The Russian man wearing the blue shirt who always stood next to the dark haired woman. "Nurse Yuri Kerenski." The German woman in the green jumpsuit. "Senior Technician Steffi Ehrlich." The young man who controlled Gadget. "Junior Technician Roman Groom." The Doctor stopped in front of the last crewmember in the room, the dark haired woman in red. "Geologist Mia Bennett. You're only twenty seven years old."

Clara's face quirked as she looked at him. "How do you know all of them?" she asked. Was his brain just like this big, huge database full of information on everything, or something?

Captain Adelaide only nodded. "As I said, everyone knows our names."

Clara laughed inside. Yeah, funny thing... She wasn't from this time; she was from Earth's past. "I don't-" she started, but the Doctor quickly cut her off.

"Oh, they'll never forget them," he said quickly, shooting a warning look at her, reminding her that they couldn't know about where they came from. She supposed that it would give them all the more reasons to not trust them. The Doctor continued hesitantly. "What's the date, today? What is it? Tell me the exact date. "

"November 21st, 2059."

He swallowed, hard. "Right. Okay, fine," he said, but his tone of voice betrayed him. The date she gave was very much not fine. Whatever that meant, to him it was obviously not something to celebrate about, and it actually slightly frightened her.

"Why was that needed?" Clara questioned him, her eyes squinting in doubt. She knew for certain it was significant, him being a time traveller and all, but as for WHAT exactly it was... she had a few fears on the subject.

Steffi, standing near the middle the group, seemed a bit worried. "Is there something wrong?"

_Could be,_ Clara thought. The Doctor certainly acted like he had a great amount of foreknowledge connected to the phrase "Bowie Base One". Every time she glanced up at him, his brows were harshly pressed together, nearly in a scowl. When he looked at the crew, he seemed as if he were giving them his condolences.

"What's so important about my age?" she could hear Mia ask in the background, but didn't take heed of- all of her thoughts were placed firmly on Bowie Base One, and November 21st, 2059, and what all this could mean.

_What if this was the date of some big disaster, or something? _her mind churned. _Or maybe some sort of mutiny, or a huge mistake in the mission_? _Could they change it? Could they change its outcome? Was this why the Doctor had come here?_

_Time can be rewritten! _an unfamiliar voice flashed through her mind.

_Don't you dare... _warned another.

Her concentration shattered when the Time Lord grabbed her arm more harshly than she though he intended, and started to lead her back towards the air lock.

"I- Clara, we should go," he said.

"Why?" she whispered. "Is there something wrong here? And if there was, wouldn't that give us all the more reason to stay? I mean, if they're famous, then-"

"No," he interrupted her, "we really should go." He turned towards the rest of the Bowie Base One crew, all seven of them in the room. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry with all of my hearts, but it's one of those very rare times when I've got no choice. It's been an honour. Seriously, a very great honour to meet you all. The Martian pioneers. "

Clara watched as one by one, he shook each of their hands. The expressions of the crew ranged from annoyance to sheer bewilderment. He stopped when he got to Roman, whose arms were fully wired up in the auto-gloves of the robot. He instead padded little Gadget on its round head, speaking softly to the thing.

"Oh, thank you. Ah..."

"Gadget gadget," it replied.

When the Doctor got to Adelaide, his body immediately straightened up, and his hand flew to a salute in respect. He grinned all the while, like a schoolboy who got to meet his childhood role model.

"Thank you," he told her in full sincerity. Clara could then practically see as his brain shifted gears from being star struck to thinking logically. "There's the other two," he realized. "Hold on. Margaret Cain and Andrew Stone..."

Ed, the second in command, rolled over to one of the workstation monitors, and pressed a button on its console. There was a slight smile on his face, and he paused for just a second before speaking into the mic. "Maggie, if you want to meet the only new human beings that you're going to see in the next five years, better come take a look."

Clara started to smile- she liked the way Ed dealt with things- but what came back from the communication systems was definitely NOT a Maggie. It didn't even sound human at all; a deep guttural growl that sent shivers down her spine and caught the attention of everybody in the base.

Mia seemed startled. "What was that?" she asked, voicing the question everybody else was silently asking. Clara shook her head, mulling this over.

"That sounded like an wild animal," she said, with a quick glance towards the Doctor for agreement. "On Mars, though?"

He apparently wasn't listening, however, and was caught up in his own little world. "Oh, I really should go," he mumbled. "Clara, we really, really, should go..."

Ed frowned, and tapped the intercom to speak again. "This is Central. Biodome report immediately."

A whole different air breezed above the heads of the crewmembers when there was still no identifiable answer. Captain Adelaide frowned, and dashed over to the monitor her second in command was standing at. Most of the crew followed her, clumping around the small screen to look. The Doctor stayed behind, still standing ridged by the airlock.

"Show me the Biodome," she told Ed. He typed a few things and pressed a button on the dash, and immediately began scrolling through some past photos and videos from the Biodome cameras that had come up.

Clara hopped on over to look as well, standing on tiptoes behind Yuri. (Okay, so maybe she WAS a bit short...) "What is it?" she asked, curious. Because if it was a Martian, an Ice Warrior, then...

Adelaide's eyes flicked back towards her as she calmly replied. "It doesn't concern you, Clara."

"Internal cameras are down," Ed growled quietly, and everyone else could understand his frustration. But the captain just shook her head, refusing to give up so easily.

"Show me the exterior."

Ed pushed another button, and the display became blue static for a second before flicking to a view of the Biodome from the outside of the base. Clara watched as one by one, the lights inside the dome began to switch off. When all of them were out, Adelaide had made up her mind. Determination shone from her face.

"I'm going over," she told everyone. Her head snapped up towards the Doctor, who stood begrudgingly by the airlock door. His face lit up in surprise. "Doctor, Clara, with me."

"Yeah, um-" he began to protest, but Clara perked up, and smirked ever so slightly.

"So it concerns me now, does it?" she said, eagerly following Adelaide as she prepared to check on the outer dome. "Which direction's the Biodome?"

Suddenly the Doctor reached forward and grabbed her by her shoulders. He tried pulling her back towards the airlock. She struggled with him, trying to escape his form grip. She didn't want to leave, she wanted to _stay_.

"Look, I'm sorry," he declared, dragging a protesting Clara away. "Er, we'd love to help, but I am leaving right now, and- and so are you," he whispered down to her fervently.

"But Doctor-"

"Clara, come on." This time, she could tell he was utterly serious. There was no humor in his face; in fact, the blood was nearly drained out of it. So she stopped fighting him, and let his hand slip down into hers as he led them towards the airlock.

"Take their spacesuits, lock them up," commanded Adelaide, and they immediately stopped in their place and turned around. She peered at them. "This started as soon as you two arrived, so you're not going anywhere except with me."

The captain, with those words, slipped through her crewmembers to talk to Tarak. Clara leaned up against a white wall, and frowned at the Time Lord next to her.

"Well, that's settled then," she muttered. The Doctor looked at her for a good long while, without even blinking. He was caught in the same brooding expression he held when they had ridden down the elevator. Clara shook her head in disbelief. "What is it with you? Something's happened here, and they might need help. I mean, that's what we do."

The Doctor's eyes peered into hers, unmoving, but she could see him mentally calculating her last statement. "And how would you know that?"

She sighed. "Are you saying that's not the point of all this? We were able to help Kratx and send him on his way, so why can't we do the same here?"

The question hung in the air for a while. The crew of Bowie Base One ran around them in a flurry, caught in life at full speed, but the Doctor and Clara were living at their own pace. He lowered his head, swallowing his pride. There were things whispering behind his deep brown eyes, stories of loss and horror that no one would want to recall.

"You don't know a lot of things..." he began, and Clara stopped to listen. "Including me. You have to understand, there are moments in time I can't risk changing." His voice fell to a near-silent whisper then, as he brought his lips to her ear. "And this is one of them."

"So you DO know what will happen today."

"What?"

Clara raised a brow, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Ever since your reaction to the date, I've had this nasty suspicion that you know something."

"Are you two coming?"

Both of their heads whipped around. Adelaide stood by the monitors, waiting for them. The Doctor swallowed nervously, and answered.

"Yes, Captain." After glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, he whispered into Clara's ear again. "We can discuss this later. I'm sorry, but now is not the time."

He pulled away from her then to follow Captain Adelaide Brook. Clara sighed, and pushed away from the wall to follow. She flexed her hand down at the side of her red dress, much shocked to realize that she had been holding onto his hand throughout that entire conversation.

* * *

_Next chapter..._

_For a small base, the med bay was nothing to sneeze at. It was pretty large, and besides the confinement chamber was filled with a lot of expensive looking medical equipment. Being on Mars, however, Clara assumed that there was the risk of running into new deadly diseases, so the equipment was there in case the crew needed to quickly create a vaccine. After Ed left to go monitor Adelaide and the Doctor's progress in the Biodome, Yuri went to work by one of the stations at the side of the room. Clara turned her head to glance at him. Everybody in this base was so... controlled. They just automatically did their duties, whatever they were. It was weird for her, coming from a family where everybody seemed to second-guess each other._

_"What are you doing?" she asked him, curious._

_"I am..." he began, typing away at the computer, "bringing Maggie's stats up on the monitor." He hit one last key and flipped the screen away from him to face Clara. "There you go. Her heart's beating steady, brain activity's growing stronger as well. She should regain consciousness anytime now."_

_"That's awesome. I love good news."_

_She smiled, sincerely for once in this mad adventure she found herself in the middle of, and walked closer to the monitor to read more of the statistics. Her eyes flicked up at him. "You don't happen to have any drinking water over here, do you? I'm parched."_

* * *

**Thanks so much for sticking with me so far! I had great fun writing these next few chapters, so I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I had! In the next chapter, there'll be all sorts of things going on... Reviews are always ****appreciated.**

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:  
****31 days!**


	7. The Waters Of Mars: The Flood Begins

**A big thank you to my lovely reviewers/favoriters/followers, Damon's Charlene, moviegal102, blueoceans1265, StarReader2009, Candan98, violet404, and nzcoker86. Thank you also to all the rest of my readers out there! All of you are filled with awesomeness!**

* * *

Chapter Seven

_The Waters of Mars: The Flood Begins_

It was very deceiving how large the covered walkways between the domes were. From the outside of the base when she had first seen them, they had seemed much shorter. Now, as she stood starring down the massive metal modular, they were practically never-ending. The floor was concrete, the walls were made of thick metal paneling, and pipes sprawled through the air above her head. After a bit of walking, her feet began to ache, surprisingly enough to her. She wore these booties quite often without problem.

The small group, consisting of her, the Doctor, Captain Adelaide Brooke and the other doctor Tarak Ital, made their way through this passage very slowly. So slowly that Clara began to believe- the "glass is half empty" part of her, at least- that they might never reach their destination alive. Her throat advocated this thought, which was now so dry it could have been the Sahara Desert. She hadn't noticed before how thirsty she had become over the course of these events. Walking a good mile and a half on the surface of Mars in a bulky spacesuit must have physically drained her. Still, she was determined to keep up with the group and refused to show her weakness, especially in front of the Doctor.

The robot's arm sparked, the little hot prick of light almost hitting her red dress. She flinched, and quickly moved her body away to miss it. "Gadget gadget," it droned, breaking the silence that had settled on the group like a blanket.

Adelaide suddenly saw the time fit to ask the Doctor a question, and thus the words came flowing from her mouth.

"What's so important about Mia's age?" she queried. "You said she's only twenty seven. Why does it matter? What did you mean?"

His cheeky response came like a canon blast. "Oh, I just open my mouth and words come out. They don't make much sense."

"That's telling me," Tarak breathed quietly, shaking his head.

"Much sense's a bit nice," Clara perked up, "I'd say you make no sense."

There was a moment of quiet, in which the Doctor got all the time he needed to comprehend these statements. The expression on his face that came the second later was hilarious. "Thank you, Doctor, Clara, for your kind input."

Tarak grinned. "Any time, Doctor."

Clara's lips turned up into a nervous smile, and she laughed inside. She kept on walking, pacing right next to Gadget, the robot who decided to throw a spark in her direction for the second time.

"Gadget gadget."

_That pesky little thing... It nearly got me this time._

The Doctor grimaced, a facial expression that was actually quite adorable when he did it. "I hate robots. Did I say?"

_Yes, _Clara thought. _Yes you did. Join the club, Doctor. It's a great, awesome club! We can make soufflés..._

Roman's voice from the intercom crackled. "Yeah, and he's not too fond of you. What's wrong with-"

Clara zoned out as they began talking about something with worker drones and robots that look like dogs. It wasn't that she didn't like robots, for that was definitely not the case, (her uncle used to build small fighting robots and let her watch them clash with each other when she was a little girl), but honestly she just couldn't bring herself to concentrate and listen to what they were saying. Her mind was busy chewing on other things, with no room to spare for trivial conversation.

_So, what? This morning I woke up, tried to bake a soufflé, visited with my aunt while my uncle was at work, and she took me to see Central Park. It was unbelievably busy there... But forgetting that, the rest of the day went on perfectly normal. Walked around the park for a good hour, took a taxi back to my aunt's flat, had a dinner celebration with the relatives, and then I got to hang out with some of my cousins in Times Square before the countdown to midnight. I didn't have even one itsy-bitsy tiny ounce of alcohol save what was accidentally dumped upon my head, yet now I am standing on Mars, in a human built experimental space base, with an time traveling alien Time Lord who calls himself the Doctor, a good 50 years into Earth's future. What the hell happened?_?

Clara's head thumped, the start of a blaring headache coming on. She damn well knew what had happened. Her idealistic fantasies of traveling the world and her naive sense of judgment happened. And now there was a possibility that she would never get back home. The TARDIS was a good two miles away out on the Martian surface. If there was real danger on this base, the crew might not let them leave. The way the Doctor acted when Adelaide asked for their aid seemed to reflect this fear a lot.

Clara's thoughts soared back into the here-and-now when a strand of hair flew in front of her eyes. She reached up to tuck it behind her ear, and decided to listen back in on the Doctor's conversation with the crew.

"-one thing they never said. Was it worth it, the mission?" the Time Lord asked. Captain Adelaide blinked, her expression unchanging.

"We've got excellent results from the soil analysis."

He glanced towards her from the corner of his eyes, and Clara realized he wasn't receiving the answer he wanted. "No, but all of it. Because they say you sacrificed everything. Devoted your whole life to get here."

Adelaide's countenance darkened. She tightened the grip on her metal flashlight. "It's been chaos back home," she explained. "Forty long years. The climate, the ozone, the oil apocalypse."

These words pulled at Clara. This woman was from only fifty years into the Earth's future. It was hard to imagine- back in year 2000; she could only be a little girl. But the dread tone in her voice confirmed it, that halfway into the 21st century the world would not be functioning as it should be. And that was the near opposite of what she had imagined before them as she stood applauding the human race's entrance into the new millennium just earlier that morning.

There was nearly a tear in corner of the captain's eye as she continued. "We almost reached extinction. Then to fly above that, to stand on a world with no smoke, where the only straight line is the sunlight? Yes. It's worth it."

Clara smiled at her, and the Doctor's lips also curled up. He looked at Captain Brooke walking beside them, brave, determined, and willing to fly away just for the littlest taste of the universe. "Ah. That's the Adelaide Brooke I always wanted to meet," he breathed in awe. "The woman with starlight in her soul."

The older woman's head flicked up towards him, but then she saw something up ahead that broke the delicate moment. "What's that?" she questioned, and began running forwards. Clara, the Doctor, and Tarak followed. There was a lump- no, a body- lying on the floor, seemingly unconscious. Adelaide reached the body first.

"It's Maggie," she said, as she saw her fallen comrade. She rushed down to her knees, along with Tarak, who instantly began searching for an obvious ailment, as a good physician should.

The Doctor reacted like a fuse blowing, and nearly made Clara's heart jump into her throat. "Don't touch her!" he demanded quickly, towering nervously above them. Tarak's hands wavered over the body.

"What happened?" Clara murmured. She kneeled next to Captain Brooke, and stared at the Bowie Base One crewmember. She was a pretty young woman, and out cold on her side, but there didn't seem to be anything wrong on the surface.

"I know the procedure," Tarak declared then, breaking her train of thought. He placed a gentle hand on Maggie's shoulder, ignoring the Doctor's advice to not touch, and tried to wake her. "Maggie, can you hear me? It's Tarak. Maggie?" There was no response. He carefully rolled her on her back, and everyone relaxed when they noticed her chest still rising up and down. "It's okay, she's still breathing. She's alive."

The worry etched on Adelaide's face slowly began to dissipate, but there was still a little bit of anxiety left. At that moment, Tarak slipped a hand down in one of his pockets and grabbed out a communicator. It seemed like everybody on this base had one.

"Yuri, I've got Margaret Cain, head trauma," he spoke into the small device. "I need a full medpack."

A response immediately echoed back from the Russian.

"I've got it. Medpack on its way."

By now, Clara had stood up from her kneeling position, and was nervously pacing around the modular corridor as they waited for the medpack. The Doctor glanced over at her; somehow, with just that one moment of eye contact he managed to convey that he held the same amount of worry as she did. Now, did he run into scrapes like this a lot, she wondered? Was this normal everyday life for him? Or was this just a rare occurrence?

"I know CPR if that's any help," she spoke up hesitantly, looking from the Doctor to Adelaide to Tarak. "It's kind of a requirement, working in a day care facility..." she commented with a small laugh.

"No, like I said, don't you touch her!" the Doctor warned her in a fervent whisper, walking up right by her shoulder.

The Captain chuckled, still on the floor with Maggie. "You're not a scientist or an explorer, are you Clara?" she asked pointedly.

"Is it that obvious?" Clara responded, with a brow raised nearly to the roof.

Adelaide gave her only a sad smile, and nodded. "You go about things so innocently, not knowing the dangers that lie in deep space, let alone another planet..."

Clara blinked. Okay, then. "Well. You've got me there," she said nervously. "I'm just a traveler. Of sorts."

"'Just' a traveler?" Tarak pointed out in doubt.

"I'm-"

"She's with me," the Doctor interrupted then, bounding into the conversation like an overactive kangaroo. "A friend. I'm sorry, Captain. I'm so, so sorry. We didn't know we'd land here today."

The captain's gaze narrowed. "You keep apologizing to me. Why?"

He kept eye contact with her, but did not speak a word. The expression on his face was somehow kept completely void of unnecessary emotion, a skill that Clara noticed he was very good at. Meanwhile, Adelaide was silently asking for an answer to a question that haunted her curious mind as well.

It was the sound of heavy footsteps clapping against the concrete floor that alerted them that Yuri had arrived with the medpack. An unwieldy stretcher board slung over his shoulder. Ed Gold, the second in command, followed in his rear. Clara glanced over towards Adelaide, and it quickly became clear that she was not too thrilled about Ed's decision to tag along.

"Don't touch her," the Doctor warned once again, watching as Yuri immediately fell to his knees in front of Maggie with the stretcher, and emptied a few supplies out from the medpack. "Use the gloves."

Clara, standing next to the Time Lord, frowned. "You keep saying that, don't touch her, why is that?" she asked.

Tarak continued to direct Yuri, seemingly paying no attention to the conversation happening above them. The Doctor sighed loudly, and ran his left hand through the tangled mess of fluffy hair atop his head. (Wow- how much time did it really take him to do his hair in the morning?) His eyes were pained, torn between telling her the full truth or keeping quiet about it, which was probably due to the presence of Bowie Base One crewmembers around them...

"I- I can't tell you right now, Clara," he finally managed, "but she's dangerous."

Clara's mouth quirked, confused. She took a breath to ask another question, when the two were violently snapped back into the natural flow of life by Captain Adelaide Brooke's soft spoken but commanding voice.

"We're going on to the Biodome. Tarak, with me. Yuri can take care of her. Ed, go back. Gadget, stand guard. Keep an eye on this area."

"Gadget gadget," the robot replied, controlled by Roman back at central. Adelaide walked up in front of the Doctor.

"And Doctor, what do you mean by that?" she questioned, staring right at him. "Why is she dangerous? If you know anything important, then-"

"Captain, you're going to need me," Ed suddenly spoke up. "Andy is the only other crew member out here, and if that wasn't an accident, then he's gone wild."

The cold look that crossed the captain's countenance then was enough to worry Clara. "You've deserted your post. And interrupted me," she told him coolly. "Consider that an official warning. Now get back to work. Doctor, Clara?"

"Clara's not coming," the Doctor quickly spoke up, crossing his arms. The brunette woman in question's head snapped up towards him.

"What?" she asked in disbelief. Was he really abandoning her?

"Go with Ed and Yuri, back to med bay. You'll be safer there."

"Well, what about you?" Clara queried in challenge, and titled her head to the side. "Will you be safe, out there? 'Cause I really don't think there's much of a difference between Time Lords and humans when it comes to-"

The Doctor practically rolled his eyes, and quieted her with a hand on her shoulder. "I'm not what you need to worry about in this base," he whispered. "Just, please... Go. You can help me best from there, and keep me updated on how Maggie's doing."

Clara's lips curved into a pout, as she contemplated his pitch. Finally, after a moment in thought, she agreed with a small nod.

"Fine."

She stepped back with Ed and Yuri, who were busy loading the young woman's unconscious body onto the handheld stretcher. They were just strapping her on; the thick white bands kept her secure on the long plastic board. A few meters away Captain Brooke, Tarak, and the Doctor were preparing to step through the airlock and into the Biodome. The airlock opened with the same mechanical hiss that Clara had heard minutes earlier. Before he left through the thick metal doorway, the Doctor voiced a message back to her.

"Clara, try to get your hands on a communicator, and I'll keep in touch!"

"Clara? You coming?" boomed the voice of Ed from down the modular walkway. Her head flipped around. He and Yuri were already a ways down the corridor with Maggie. With a heavy sigh, she speedily ran after them, hearing the click of the airlock mechanism behind her.

**~8~**

_See? I told you earlier, the Doctor doesn't even care about you_.

_Shut up..._

_There's no denying it now the way he bravely sent you off, oh how chivalrous, Doctor. Trying to mask his guilt by saying he's keeping you safe..._

_ Shut up!_

_He does not really like you, or want to talk to you, or even care, the only reason you are here right now... is because of his selfish desire for companionship. That's all you are. A little human pet for the high and mighty Time Lord, petty entertainment to make him feel less... lonely._

_I said SHUT UP! Just STOP IT already!_

_You think I'm just your insecurity. You think I'm just a figment of your imagination. You think the Doctor wants you, you horrid fool. You think you know everything._

_I-_

_Exactly. You don't even know how to respond. The Doctor will always be so much more knowledgeable than you, and so am I. I know your purpose. I know your desires. I know everything about you, so just. Give. Up._

_I- even I don't know what my own purpose is in life! How could I? I'm just one person...!_

_How can you know? How can the stupid human girl ever know? Ever tried closing your eyes?_

_What? No, I- I don't know where I am! Where am I? Am I falling? What is this...? Doctor! DOCTOR!_

_That's it. Go on. Call for your precious Doctor, go right ahead. It's not like he can hear you..._

_But... what if he can?_

_What?_

"What if the Doctor can hear me?" Clara asked aloud, opening her eyes and stopping right in her tracks. Ed and Yuri in front of her didn't notice, still busy carrying the young woman on the stretcher.

"We're almost there, Maggie," she could hear Yuri whisper to her.

Luckily for Clara, the voice in her head did not respond to her last question. Her lips turned up in a smile. She kept on walking.

"Thank you," she whispered, "whoever the hell you are, for helping me discover my destiny."

**~8~**

"Andrew? Andrew Stone? It's Captain Brooke," she called out into the darkness of the Biodome. "Andy, report. I need to see you. Where are you?"

Biting his lip, the Doctor slipped his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket, moseyed over to a small computer terminal, and gave it a bit of a zap. Within seconds, all of the lights in the dome began to flicker back on, and revealed rows and rows of green vegetation and plants growing tall. There were so many plants in there it was almost a jungle.

"There you go," he declared smugly.

"What's that device?" Adelaide asked, an impressed look upon her face.

"Screwdriver."

She then nearly chuckled, giving him a brow. "Are you the Doctor or the janitor?" She pointed her light out into the distance, and began searching for Andy.

The Doctor thought about her last statement for a second, sizing it up as he took a gander around the large Biodome. "I don't know. Sounds like me," he murmured. "The maintenance man of the universe..."

**~8~**

Ed and Yuri had quickly moved Maggie's unconscious body securely into containment, behind a five-centimeter thick glass wall. To Clara, it seemed a bit extreme, but Yuri quickly informed her that it was necessary on Mars, just to be sure. "On a new planet, you never quite know what you're going to find," he said. So she was to stay in there for twenty-four hours, even if she was physically and mentally healthy.

For a small base, the med bay was nothing to sneeze at. It was pretty large, and besides the confinement chamber was filled with a lot of expensive looking medical equipment. Being on Mars, however, Clara assumed that there was the risk of running into new deadly diseases, so the equipment was there in case the crew needed to quickly create a vaccine. After Ed left to go monitor Adelaide and the Doctor's progress in the Biodome, Yuri went to work by one of the stations at the side of the room. Clara turned her head to glance at him. Everybody in this base was so... controlled. They just automatically did their duties, whatever they were. It was weird for her, coming from a family where everybody seemed to second-guess each other.

"What are you doing?" she asked him, curious.

"I am..." he began, typing away at the computer, "bringing Maggie's stats up on the monitor." He hit one last key and flipped the screen away from him to face Clara. "There you go. Her heart's beating steady, brain activity's growing stronger as well. She should regain consciousness anytime now."

"That's awesome. I love good news."

She smiled, sincerely for once in this mad adventure she found herself in the middle of, and walked closer to the monitor to read more of the statistics. Her eyes flicked up at him. "You don't happen to have any drinking water over here, do you? I'm parched."

Yuri stopped for a second to think. Then he grinned, and ran over to the storage bins lining the wall. "Oh, I've got a bottle I filled just this morning." He scavenged through the bin, and after finding what he was looking for, passed a small metal canister over to her. Condensation dripped off the small screw lid, and it was shocking how light it was. "It's yours," he declared. "I haven't taken a single sip out of it."

"Thanks," Clara breathed, already starting to twist the cap off. She un-screwed it, held the small plastic lid in her opposite hand, and drained the entire bottle in one go. Yuri starred at her the entire time, his mouth wide open. She just grinned. "Told ya I was thirsty."

They suddenly heard a groan behind them, and both whipped around to look. Yuri's eyes lit up.

"Mag's awake! I knew she'd be fine, she's a tough ol' girl." He bounded over to the containment window, and tossed his communicator over to her. "Contact the Captain for me, please."

Clara just barely caught it. She fiddled with the controls for a second before she pressed one of the buttons hesitantly. It never hurt to try things, of course. "Hello?"

There was a click, as the other communicator responded. And a muffled voice. She couldn't understand anything at first, but it quickly became clearer.

"-it to me. Clara?"

It was the Doctor. He must have gotten ahold of Adelaide's com, although Clara had reasons to believe it was not an easy task.

"Doctor," Clara grinned; she found that it was not nearly possible to say his name without doing so. "Doctor, listen to me. Tell Captain Adelaide that Maggie is awake."

The com muffled again, and she could barely hear the Doctor exclaim something in the background. And then she heard Adelaide's voice.

"I'm here. That's very good news, Clara, thank you for telling me. Can you ask if she remembers what happened?"

Clara turned around, and looked through the glass window to Maggie, who was now propped up on the small bed. The woman nodded, apparently hearing the question.

"I heard you," she said, loudly enough for the com to pick it up. "I don't remember anything. I was just working. Then I woke up here."

"What about Andy?" her voice crackled. "We can't find him. Is he alright?"

"I don't know, I just-"

"If you remember anything, let me know straight away."

As Adelaide finished her sentence, Clara could hear Ed start in from the central dome.

"Yuri, does she know how she ended up in the tunnel?" he asked.

"And keep the coms clear," Captain Brooke requested. "Everything goes through me, got that?"

"Adelaide," she heard the Doctor's voice cut through in the background. "I really, really need to be able to speak with Clara if a situation arises."

"That's fine, Doctor," she replied. "But it will still go through me."

With that, the communicator went silent. Clara held it for a few extra seconds, just to make sure there was nothing else to be said. There was nothing but radio silence. She glanced up at Maggie in containment. The woman looked rather groggy, but awake enough to be responsive. She had smooth, dark skin and thickly curled hair, and was wearing a navy green jumpsuit much like Steffi's. It must have been uniform, then.

"You okay?"

She smiled a bit. "Yeah. Who are you?"

"I'm Clara. Clara Oswald. You're Maggie?" she asked, nodding towards her.

"Yes. Margaret Cain." She laughed quietly. "Everyone does call me Maggie, though."

"So," Yuri cut in suddenly, walking up to the glass next to Clara. "Your Doctor. He's quite protective. You together?"

"Oh, no," she chuckled. "I actually just met him today."

"Where, out on the surface? You're on another planet!" Maggie teased, grinning.

"Well, now I'm on another planet," Clara murmured quietly. "It's a long story," she blurted finally. "But enough about the Doctor and I, what about you and Mia, Yuri?"

Yuri seemed shocked. "What?"

Maggie smirked. "Yes, what about Mia?"

"I saw the way you and her held hands the whole time when I was getting ready to go to the Biodome," Clara stated. "I know attraction when I see it..."

He blushed, and began spluttering. "Well, I- it's not like I can ask her out here on Mars! If Adelaide knew, she'd put us on separate shifts for the next three years!"

Clara laughed, and flicked her sight over to Maggie, who only nodded.

"Trust me, she would," she agreed. "Now, what about that long story of yours? Go on, let's hear it."

"I'm not sure you'd believe me, really. It sounds batty. But if you insist..."

**~8~**

"Doctor, do you know where Tarak went?" Adelaide called as she emerged from a pathway behind one of the many trees. The beam of her flashlight hit the Doctor in the back, and glared off of his bright blue suit. "Doctor? Are you okay?"

"Hm?" he turned around quickly, and saw the worried expression on her face. "Oh no, I'm fine. I'm just thinking."

She waited for him to continue, but nothing came. "About what?"

"Oh, just about- stuff. Real complicated stuff, a lot of confusing, timey-wimey stuff," he said quickly, "you wouldn't understand."

Captain Brooke blinked at him but left it at that. She shook her head, and began to search to find where Tarak went off to. The Doctor knew she was better off, unaware of the things to come, but he still couldn't deny he felt guilty about it. It was moments like this that made him hate knowing what lies in the future.

**~8~**

"So you're trying to tell me that the man is an alien who travels through time and space in a ship that's bigger on the inside?"

"Yes," Clara laughed at Yuri, who was currently gob smacked. "I said you wouldn't believe it."

"But how would you run into someone like that?" Maggie queried. "It sounds like he doesn't stop much!"

"Well, I told you how I was from the past, and you saw my mobile, said it was practically an antique. It just became New Years Day 2000 from when I left," she explained, but then her knees starting cramping so she paused as she shifted her weight off of her knees and sat back against the glass of the containment chamber. She glanced to her side where Yuri sat in the same position, and cleared phlegm from her throat loudly. She heard a rustling noise, but payed no attention as she told her story. "I was in New York City, do they- do they still have the Times Square celebrations in your day?"

"Where is that?" the young woman who worked in Bowie Base One asked.

"What, New York City?" Clara clarified, but didn't turn to look. "Does it not exist anymore?"

"Where is that?" she repeated in a bored tone.

Yuri heaved a large sigh as she clambered up to his feet and hobbled over to the monitor as if his feet had fallen asleep. "Maggie, you know where New York is, right on the east coast of America!" He typed a bit on the computer, and then pushed the monitor so that she could see it. "Here!"

"It is near the sea," Maggie stated in monotone, and it was then that Clara began to worry. From what she knew of Margaret Cain, this was not her personality. She wasn't one to speak like this. So she slowly looked behind her, and what she saw made her knees go weak.

"Yuri..."

"Well, technically it's more an ocean," he continued, not noticing the huge problem behind him.

"Earth has so much water," Maggie droned on.

"Yeah, just look at her," he breathed in awe, staring at the screen where not a picture of Earth sat. "Forty million miles away."

"Yuri!" Clara called again, although this time in greater urgency.

"It has so much beauty..."

She ran over to him, gripped his shoulders, and wheeled him around to face the containment chamber. He made a sort of gagging noise at the back of his throat as he saw what she did.

Maggie was no longer Maggie. Her eyes were lifeless, like a black void, and the skin was broken around her mouth as if baked for weeks in the hot desert sun. Water poured openly like a sprinkler valve from in between her blackened lips, flowing down the front of her heavy clothes to the floor. Clara and Yuri stared in fear, standing next to each other as the last support the other had. The voice of Maggie (or whatever she was now) then became layered and harmonious, as if the voices of many converged on one.

"We should like that world."

**~8~**

The Doctor could hear Clara's distress call from rows away. He ran- no, sprinted for dear life- over to where Adelaide was standing, trying to deal with a woman in hysterics. He could only hope beyond all else that she was okay.

"Clara, just calm down. Tell me what happened to her!" the Captain requested.

The Doctor came upon Captain Adelaide and without a single word yanked the communicator out of her hand. He began to pace away, and put the com up to his lips. "I'm here, Clara," he said. "It's okay, I'm coming to get you as soon as I can. But you need to calm down and tell me- what happened?"

Her response came fearfully, sprinkled with the occasional sob. "It was Maggie, we were just talking, and- and she just- sort of went completely wild, and her skin's all-"

There was a little bit of crackling over the com, and then the Doctor could hear Yuri's voice, wavering slightly, but still strong. "The skin is sort of broken around the mouth," he began, "and she's exuding water like she's drowning."

The Time Lord's face darkened at this news. He took a cautionary breath. "Thank you, Yuri. Now give the communicator back to Clara, I need to talk with her."

"Yes, right away."

He waited for a few seconds for Clara to pick back up, taking a moment to glance over at Adelaide, who seemed more worried than usual and was staring at him with a desperate expression, which was rare with her resolve.

"Doctor?"

"I'm here. Now listen, I-"

"Doctor, what's happening? What's wrong with Maggie?" She sounded calmer now, although adamant.

He sighed. "I'll tell you later." He could almost hear her frown.

"Tell me now," Clara asked. "Please."

"Clara, I-"

"Please! This doesn't just involve us, this involves them too!" she pointed out desperately. "That's surely not fair. You can't just keep them in the dark, if you have even the smallest idea what's going on."

The Doctor was silent, and the com link followed. His newfound human friend spoke again, clearing her throat first.

"Today, as you very well know, I met an impossible man. He called himself the Doctor. I can't say I know him very well, but I do know that he is very kind, very caring, and perhaps just a teensy-tiny bit scared. I have not a clue what you might possibly be scared about." There was a pause. "But these people, all the crew members, even Maggie... They're counting on us, Doctor. We have to help them! And you're not doing this on your own, so you need to tell me what is going on and how I can help."

He closed his eyes, mulling his options over. Would he tell her? Would he tell Adelaide? Could he?

Could he tell anyone the truth?

**~8~**

"So you need to tell me what is going on and how I can help," Clara finished, and took a deep breath. The man did not respond at first, but she expected that. He would need time to think. Soon, however, she heard footsteps. The Doctor was moving. But where? Away from Adelaide and Tarak?

"What's happened to Maggie," he said finally, "is the beginning of The Flood." Clara could practically hear the capitals in his sentence.

"And what's that, exactly?" she asked warily.

"The Flood... it is-"

Before the Doctor could complete his thought, she heard something loud blast through the com link, as loud as a canon blast. Except it didn't sound like a canon, exactly. It sounded like water. The Time Lord shouted in surprise, and there was a dull clunk, as if he had dropped the device. And then the communicator went completely silent, the Doctor not responding any more, not even to Clara's screams.

* * *

_Next chapter..._

_Doctor!" she screamed. "Doctor!? Are you there? DOCTOR!?"_

_"Clara, just calm down!" Yuri commanded. He marched over to her, yanked the com device from her quivering hand, and put it to his ear. For about five seconds, he listened. Those were five of the longest seconds of Clara's life. "There's nothing," he said finally, and dejectedly threw the hunk of metal at the med bay table in the middle of the room. "I'm sorry. I think he's gone."_

* * *

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:  
****Only 24 days! :D**

**I'm so excited! A theater literally a few minutes from where I live has a November 25th showing of The Day of the Doctor in 3D, and I was able to get tickets! Of course, this means I'll have to refrain from watching it on the 23rd, because I would rather be surprised when I see it that next Monday. Heh. We'll see how the waiting goes...  
#WhovianProblems**


	8. The Waters Of Mars: Glacier

**Thank you to my reviewers/favoriters/followers: moviegal102, The Doctor's Charlene, minachan545, Smoldering Blue Eyes, Evanescentfacade, A Jade Snowman, and mira54. **

**While I'm at it, I would also like to make a shout out to my source for specific episode dialogue, Chrissie's Transcripts Site, which has accurate transcripts for pretty much every single episode of Doctor Who. I have a link on my bio, in case anyone's curious. :)**

* * *

Chapter Eight

_The Waters of Mars: Glacier_

"Doctor!" she screamed. "Doctor!? Are you there? DOCTOR!?"

"Clara, just calm down!" Yuri commanded. He marched over to her, yanked the com device from her quivering hand, and put it to his ear. For about five seconds, he listened. Those were five of the longest seconds of Clara's life. "There's nothing," he said finally, and dejectedly threw the hunk of metal at the med bay table in the middle of the room. "I'm sorry. I think he's gone."

The two became quiet then. Yuri clambered over to the mourning woman, and wrapped her up in a warm hug. She buried her face in his chest, though she was short enough compared to him that she couldn't reach his shoulder. She wasn't crying, though; her anguish was more... slowly simmering. For a good time, she accepted the comforting embrace gladly, happy to have somebody to hold on to. Then her mind started spinning.

"No," she murmured suddenly. Yuri's brow quirked, and he glanced down to her. She had lifted her head in defiance, not even a ring of red around her eyes. "No," she repeated, voice stronger, as she gently pushed away from the Russian man's hug. "He's not gone. He can't be. After all, he's my ride home, right?"

Yuri, unsure of how to respond in the situation, just nodded. Clara seemed to grow stronger as she planted her feet firmly on the ground. Purposely, she ignored the water spewing... thing, once Maggie, who stood eagerly in containment. Instead, something in her had changed. She refused to believe the Doctor was gone. She refused to budge to even fear and doubt.

"If you are even the tiniest bit alive," she whispered, "then I dare you. Run to me."

**~8~**

The Doctor opened his eyes. His arm was stretched over his face as a shield, and the world spun around him like he had turned in circles a few hundred thousand times. His hair- in fact, his whole body- was soaking wet, and water dripped from the crease of his suit jacket onto the floor. This of course, was absolutely NOT good. Oh, yes, this was absolutely the worst thing that could have happened here in this base. He had no excuse to give for the sheer anxiety that was cascading through his mind. The two hearts pounding heavily in his chest did nothing to relieve him of any anxiety, either.

And then there was the fine sight in front of him.

"Ah, so you're Andy, I presume?" he asked the creature hesitantly.

The creature that once was the Bowie Base One crew member Andrew Stone growled, matching the bone shaking growl that was heard in Central just as Steffi had reported. He -it?- was quite the monstrous sight; the skin was cracked around the mouth and water was pouring out of it. Internal fission, very interesting. The process had literally burned the lips, which were now a charcoal black. The eyes seemed dead, which made sense, as this was a sort of parasite. An infectious parasite that had the capability to duplicate itself exponentially, mind you, but a parasite nonetheless. Now, since it jumped from host to host through the water, and he was now completely drenched with said water, how come he hadn't been transformed into one of them yet?

Andy growled again, and then the Doctor saw Tarak step out from behind him, who had also become one of The Flood. Cautiously, he glanced to the floor, where the communicator had been dropped. The light that signaled it was operating was completely out; the strong blast of water that hit him clear in the face must have disabled it. No contacting Clara now.

"Doctor?" he could hear Adelaide's footsteps, slowly pattering towards him. "Doctor, are you al-"

"Adelaide, don't come closer," he commanded loudly, interrupting her. "Stay back." She of course did not listen, and came from behind a tree with her gun raised, aimed at Andy. He sighed inside his head. Out of all the people he could have told to stay put, of course she would be one of them who would disobey. Still keeping the gun trained on her infected crewmember, she advanced to stand next to the lone Time Lord.

"Let him go, Andy," she warned, meaning business.

The Doctor, still staring at the converted Andrew Stone, gently pushed the Captain's gun down. Luckily for him, she didn't resist this time. He glanced at her, trying to momentarily sustain eye contact. "Adelaide, this is dangerous. Just run. _Please_."

Grimly, she bestowed him with a tight nod. Then she pocketed her gun and hastily disappeared behind another row of the Biodome's trees. Good. The last thing he needed today was another of the base's crew members down. Three had already been taken, and that was more than enough. He titled his head at Andy, who had been the one to blast water at him. "Andy. Listen. You caught me. I'm covered in water. So why haven't you taken me yet?"

Andy titled his head along with him, beginning to pantomime his every move. He could feel his heart rate go up significantly- this wasn't the beginning of the transformation, was it?

"It issss not your time, Doctor," The Flood hissed through Andy's cracked lips then, an ominous sound. "He will knock ffffour times, and ttttthen you will die."

The Time Lord's muscles clenched and his face hardened. It was the prophesy. This wasn't the first time he had heard this, oh no. Carmen, the psychic woman on the bus that had gotten stuck on the desolate planet San Helios, had first given him a warning with these same words. But that was nearly a year ago, back when he was oh... 904? 905? He could never remember for sure. Whatever the case, it couldn't be now, _because he didn't hear anybody knocking._

"Doctor!" the captain's voice called from a fair distance behind him.

And he didn't intend to stay long enough to find out, either.

He shook his head sadly, lamenting the loss of two human lives, and began cautiously walking backwards away from The Flood. "I'm so, so sorry, Andy... Tarak..."

Before they could catch him, he began to run.

**~8~**

"What the hell?" Ed breathed, starring through the glass of the containment chamber at what was once Maggie. The creature had both hands pressed against the window, and water drizzled endlessly from her fingertips down the smooth surface. She titled her head from side to side, as if pondering his weaknesses.

Clara and Yuri stood at the back of the med bay, their faces numb. They were both leaned up against the rows of storage cubbies at the wall, being careful not to knock anything over. Just minutes ago, the second in command, Deputy Edward Gold, had ran all the way to the med bay after hearing about Maggie's strange... condition. Honestly, Clara had to admit that he took it way better than she did. She was almost kicking and screaming for someone to let her out, not one of the proudest moments in her life. Quite often, she hazarded to think what the Doctor could have possibly seen in her that would have inclined him to take her along. Yes, he did say that she was brave, but she sure didn't feel brave right now.

A voice called out to the med bay then in the midst of all the chaos.

"That's not Maggie," Mia's timid voice called over the intercom. "What's happened to her? Yuri, what is she?"

Yuri glanced over at Clara, and then over to Maggie, sighing in contempt. Nobody had any idea what was going on with her, and the Russian crew member seemed no different.

Steffi's voice came next. "Captain, we need you back here. Captain? Are you there? Respond if you hear me. Captain?"

Everyone in the base waited for a response, but nothing came. There was only static.

**~8~**

Huffing and puffing, the Doctor and Adelaide Brooke rested for a moment in the airlock they had just run into. For the meantime, it seemed they were safe. Andy had tried to use his water to catch Adelaide, but luckily they had slammed the airtight door shut before anything got in.

Adelaide seemed worried, in fact, _very_ worried. She was anxious enough that the Doctor didn't even have to guess how all of the stress lines on her face appeared. Well, on Mars, there were a lot of things to stress about, he supposed.

"They took Tarak and Andy," she stated sadly. "Is there nothing we can do to reverse it?"

He shook his head. "No. Adelaide, I am very, truly sorry."

She gazed out the airlock door window, out to her once-crew members who were still standing there. Their hands and mouths were like fire hoses, with a never-ending river pouring out. "But whatever it is, it travels through the water, right?"

"How did you figure that out?" the Doctor questioned, impressed with the captain's reasoning skills.

She just shrugged. "I saw Andy converting Tarak in the shadows, it's not important. What I would like to know, however, is how in the world you managed to get that soaking wet when the only water we have in the Biodome is in irrigation."

_Oh, very good, Adelaide. Very good._

_But at the same time, how VERY bad..._

"Oh, but I'm not- didn't you hear him?" he sputtered desperately, hoping beyond all hopes that she wouldn't for a second consider leaving him with the others who had been infected. "I can't die here. I die somewhere-"

"Doctor, where is my communicator?"

"Yeah, about that... Sorry. Oh, I'm saying sorry a lot today... Um-"

Well, then. Obviously she was thinking about something else, now. Like small, metal devices. Like small, metal devices that lets one speak with people. And on Mars. When one stops to think about it, it's really not all that impressive. It's nothing more than a radio. They're proud of it, though, having radio on Mars. Not all that sure why, but it's something. Now then... It was time for the Doctor to be bloody brilliant, to get into his Spaceman mode, as Donna would have said.

_Donna. Oh, Donna. How much I miss you... I miss you more than words can say._

"Are there speakers in here?" he vocalized.

Her eyes narrowed, not entirely sure what he was getting at. "Yes, for base-wide messages. Why?"

"Oh, just... hacking." He reached into his suit jacket pocket and flipped his sonic screwdriver out in his hand. It took a second longer to locate the speaker than he would have pleased- and Adelaide's help- but when he found it he used his screwdriver to reroute the system so he could send a signal back to the main communicator.

Adelaide got close to the speaker once the Doctor had it working. "I hope somebody's receiving this- I'm sorry, we lost the com," she broadcasted to anyone who could hear. "Please tell me that Maggie is contained. Can you confirm, Ed?"

There came a moment in which both the human and the Time Lord held their breath, waiting for a reply.

"Confirmed," Ed's voice came finally, the signal overladen with static. "She's locked in. What happened in there?"

"Doctor?" said Clara eagerly. "Is the Doctor there?"

He grinned wildly as he heard his friend's voice. "I'm here, I'm fine," he exclaimed, hearing her sigh of relief.

"Captain?" Ed was adamant. "What happened?"

The Doctor could definitely tell Captain Adelaide Brooke was of the "Act now, talk later" variety, and it clearly showed in her actions. Instead of answering Edward Gold's loaded question, she chose to give directions for her crew.

"Keep surveillance till I get back. And close down all water supplies. All pipes and outlets. Don't consume anything. Have you got that, everyone? That's an order. Don't drink the water. Don't even touch it. Not one drop."

She stepped down from the speaker, apparently done with her all-crew broadcast. He silently chuckled at her last statement. Don't touch the water? Seriously? "Can you talk?" he voiced. "Human beings are sixty percent water, which makes them the perfect host."

"What for?"

"I don't know," he lied, his eyes blatantly showing it. He wasn't entirely sure if Adelaide connected two and two- although she was certainly capable of it, she was a smart woman- and realized that he wasn't telling the truth, but if she did she didn't say anything about it. "I never will. Because I've got to go. Whatever's started here, I can't see it to the end. I can't."

As if the world outside could hear him talking, Andy and Tarak chose that time to start to blast the door with water, as if water would help. Of course a door wouldn't budge easily to water.

_Would it?_

Suddenly unsure, the Doctor looked around the small airlock, taking the time to check out the door and the seal. "This thing's airtight, yeah?"

"And therefore watertight."

_Well..._

"It depends how clever the water is," he breathed, feeling less and less sure of their safety in the air lock.

The water spraying at the door mechanism did nothing to quench his nerves, either.

**~8~**

_The Doctor was alive._

Clara couldn't believe her ears when she heard his voice over the intercom. He was alive. He didn't sound like he was hurt. And Captain Adelaide Brooke was perfectly safe as well. She wiped away drying tears on her face and for once, smiled, for real this time.

_I can go home now._

Was that really what she wanted, though? To go home? She still couldn't wrap her head around all these circumstances, and when she tried, she often ended up giving herself a blinding headache. The fact that she was a whopping fifty-nine years into her future was really something to think about, on its own. Then to add aliens in the mix, Time Lords no less, made it seem like she was in some weird science fiction movie. But no matter how weird it seemed, it was an adventure, and wasn't that what she always wanted? Being where she was now- on a completely different planet- was something goodness knows how many people could only dream about, and yet here she was. Why would she ever want to give up that?

And then there was the Doctor. He was quite the enigma, that man, who seemed as if he was human but really wasn't. She couldn't quite put her finger on him- something was off. It was obvious he had a burning passion for what he did, travelling through time and helping others, but he seemed... broken. Like something had reached inside him and ripped out a piece of his heart. It seemed as if untold memories and stories whirled around his mind that she knew she'd probably never know. Was that what her destiny meant?

Why did she have to save the Doctor?

There was a loud bang. Clara couldn't help but twist her head around to see what all the commotion was about. Her eyes lit up.

"Has that door got a Hardinger seal?" Captain Adelaide Brooke questioned urgently, sprinting from the air lock into the room with a very wet Doctor in the follow. The young human woman didn't even care if he was wet, however, and ran to meet him, with a grin on her face.

She wrapped her arms around him, and almost knocked over the Time Lord with her hug, even though the water dripping from his hair and the hem of his suit jacket soaked though her dress. He was a bit surprised at first by her embrace, but gently laughed into her soft hair, and with a smile wrapped his strong arms around her as well.

When he heard Adelaide speaking about the situation, he let go of Clara so he could listen.

"-heads for the door, we evacuate. Got that?"

Ed was at the main monitor, checking Maggie's stats. "Pulse is low. Electrical activity in the brain seems to be going haywire."

Adelaide's brow furrowed, and she walked closer towards Maggie, frowning when she saw what was wrong with her. "Can she talk?"

Yuri, standing by the window of the containment room, shrugged. "Don't know. She was talking before we noticed the change, but-"

"Maggie, can you hear me? Do you know who I am? Your commanding officer, Captain Adelaide Brooke."

As the captain spoke, Clara watched as Maggie starred intently at the Doctor, eyes blank. She didn't even seem to be responding to what Adelaide was saying.

Adelaide was determined to get an answer, however. "Can you tell me what happened?"

The Time Lord swallowed, and began to say something in a language that Clara couldn't even begin to comprehend or identify. "Hoorghwall in schtochman ahn warrellinsh och fortabellan iin hoorgwahn." Amazingly, the thing that consumed Maggie seemed to recognize it. Her eyes became clear, just for one moment, as if deep down there was still a tiny sliver of Maggie in there. Suddenly she felt very saddened for her. It must have been a horrid experience, to have your body taken over by some sort of water parasite.

Ed was amazed at the glimmer of comprehension she showed. "What language is that?"

"Ancient North Martian," the Doctor responded, as if it was a normal everyday thing.

"Don't be ridiculous," the captain scoffed.

"It's like-" Ed began.

"She recognized it!" Clara finished for the deputy. "Hold on, that means The Flood, or whatever you called it, originated here, right?"

"Probably," the Doctor thought out loud. "And her eyes are different. They're clear, like she's closer to human."

Everybody gazed at Maggie, who tilted her head to either side, sizing them up. She starred at Ed. He starred back, not fazed, and opened his mouth to comment. "Not close enough for me."

There was a pause.

"Where do you get your water from?" asked the Doctor, who stood next to Clara at the back of the clump. She wormed her hand into his, and he accepted, closing his long slender fingers around hers. His hand was cold, significantly colder than hers.

"The ice field. That's why we chose the crater. We're on top of an underground glacier," said the captain.

He swallowed. "Tons of water. Marvelous."

Yuri stepped into the conversation then. "But every single drop is filtered. It's screened. It's safe."

"Looks like it, yeah," the Doctor scoffed. He squeezed Clara's hand, and to her disappointment let go, stepping forward to take a closer look at Maggie in the containment room. Ed standing at the side seemed quite disturbed at the thought that maybe their water wasn't so safe as they thought it was.

"If something was frozen down there," the second-in-command thought out loud. "A viral life form held in the ice for all those years..."

The Time Lord pointed at the consumed woman. "Look at her mouth. All blackened, like there's some sort of fission. This thing, whatever it is, doesn't just hide in water, it creates water." He squinted, and spoke directly to Maggie this time. "Tell me what you want."

There was an ominous pause, as what was once crewmember Margaret Cain starred right back at him, as if she was looking into his soul. Clara couldn't help but feel a bit innerved, and when the woman didn't answer, she gave a response.

"Maggie, she- she kept talking about Earth. About how beautiful it was."

"She wanted it," Yuri followed. "A world full of water."

Second in command Edward Gold eyed his leader with caution. "Captain, with me." He led Adelaide to the corner of the med bay, where they began to talk in private. Clara almost laughed at the Doctor's obvious-not so obvious eavesdropping on the pair, and watched as he leaned up on a tall plastic case and looked over at them. She nudged him with her shoulder.

"Okay, what happened in there? There's got to be a reason you're soaking wet, mister! Gosh, and I though I saved you from a wet head."

His eyes flicked her direction- only his eyes, as the rest of his attention was aimed at Ed and Adelaide- and he spoke few words in reply.

"I was apprehended by The Flood."

"Aaaaand... that means you got wet?" Clara queried, hoping to get more than six words from him.

"Yep," he said distractedly, popping the 'p'. Apparently hearing something interesting in the corner where the two higher in commands spoke, he launched himself off of his makeshift perch, Clara in the follow.

"Sorry, sorry," he interrupted their quiet conversation, "but, Action One, that means evacuation, yeah?" Adelaide nodded, somewhat startled by his sudden appearance practically in her face, and closed her eyes. Clara bit her lip, guessing that for her, a heavy migraine was in her future.

"We're going home. This is Captain Brooke. I'm declaring Action One. Repeat to all crewmembers, this is Action One with immediate effect. Evacuate the base."

"Action One?" the Doctor's young human friend asked.

He sniffed, and ran a hand through his tousled hair. "It's a command. When Action One is ordered, the crew packs up their stuff, everything they can carry," he started to list off things on his fingers, "all the food in stock, all the data, rocks, toothbrushes, everything. They pack it all back in their rocket. And then they fly away, back to Earth."

"Is there an Action Two?"

"Yeah, and an Action Three, and an Action Four, and an Action Five," he said at nearly a million miles a minute. Then, as he thought about everything, his once jovial expression became desolate and bleak. "But Action Five is only saved for the most desperate of times."

"Steffi, what's your estimate on shuttle viability?" Adelaide's voice could be heard barking on the communicator behind them.

Clara's brow furrowed. "Why? What does that action do?"

The Doctor was about to respond, but he looked troubled. Hearing the commands being thrown around them, he paused, taking a breath. After a second of deliberation he left the conversation at that and stepped away to participate in the evacuation preparation, leaving Clara sitting on her knees on the floor.

"Ed, line up the shuttle. Go straight to ignition status," Adelaide requested, rushing around the room.

Edward Gold nodded, and began to leave med bay. "Doing it now."

Yuri paced around frantically, beginning to pack away anything he needed from the bay. "But what about Maggie?" he asked.

"She stays behind," the captain stated frankly, as she stopped for just one moment to give all attention to her Russian crewmember. "We've got no way to contain her on board. Close this place down. I want the power directed to the shuttle."

The Doctor chose this moment to pop up in between the pair of them, Adelaide Brooke and Yuri Kerenski, like a groundhog coming out of its hole. "Of course, the only problem is-" he started.

The captain interrupted him. "Thank you, Doctor. Your spacesuits will be returned. And good luck to you both." She began to move along to the next crewmember that needed briefing, but he caught her by the arm, needing to speak with her.

"The problem is, this thing is clever," he explained quickly. "It didn't infect the birds or the insects in the Biodome, it chose the humans. You were chosen. And I told you, Adelaide, water can wait. Tarak changed straight away, but when Maggie was infected it stayed hidden inside her, no doubt so it could infiltrate the Central Dome. Which means-"

"Any one of us could already be infected," she realized, eyes wide. "We've all been drinking the same water."

The Doctor nodded solemnly. "And if you take that back to Earth, one drop. Just one drop."

She squinted, calculating and thinking about this. "But we're only presuming infection. If we can find out how this thing got through. When it got through." She began for the door, and shouted back at her crewmembers. "Yuri, continue with Action One. I'm going to inspect the ice field."

The Doctor took a deep breath. "Right. We should leave. Finally, we should leave, Clara. Don't you think? Clara?" He turned around to see her starring off into space, her face emotionless. Gently, he prodded her shoulder, and she came to.

"What? Oh, sorry. Must have dozed off..." Her eyes glistened, dazed.

He scratched his head. "I was planning to leave, but- Adelaide's heading off to the ice field to- you were listening, weren't you?"

She nodded. "Yes, I just- I had a lot on my mind. Can I-"

"Can you come with me?" he completed. Clara smiled.

"That was exactly what I was gonna ask."

* * *

_Next chapter..._

_Once again, sunlight glinted on her visor. She could barely see the Doctor. All she could see was red. Red was everywhere. It was in the rocks and the soil of the ground, it was in the sides of the base where the metal had rusted and corroded. It was in the tough scratchy fabric of the spacesuit she was wearing. It glared angrily down at her from space, blinding her vision and yet giving so much life. Red was life._

_So was running._

_She ran. She didn't know where she was running, exactly. The world blurred all around her, almost making her dizzy. She could hear her heavy breath in the tiny cramped space of the helmet. And then there was the dark silhouette of the Doctor, just barely visible a fair distance away. Was it really he, or was it an illusion? Yes, she could hear his voice. She could hear the Doctor._

_"Clara? Clara, this way!" he called, and it almost sounded like he was calling from inside her head. "Don't stop, we haven't got much time!"_

_"Doctor?" she cried, treading across the rocks, searching more than ever before. Nothing was real, it seemed. There were only dust and stones._

* * *

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:**

**18 days! We're almost there, everyone!**


	9. The Waters Of Mars: Escape

**Thanks to The Doctor's Charlene, LeilaTheGalaxyDefender, SmolderingBlueEyes, Peaceful Sunrise, ImClaraOswaldTheImpossibleGirl, JaninDoe, BisounoursEnGuimauve, Co1dsteel, TitaniaSilk, and Daughter of the Black for all of the great support! **

**If you see this centered on the page: **~~~8~~~** It signifies a POV change in the middle of a scene. I don't particularly like doing this often, but in some cases it needs it. _  
_**

******This is the second to last chapter of The Waters Of Mars. I hope you all enjoy!**

* * *

Chapter Nine

_The Waters of Mars: Escape_

"Doctor?"

"Yes, Clara?" he asked, as the pair of them ran as fast as they could, trying hard to catch up with Adelaide Brooke.

"What happens if we find something... bad... at the ice field?" she began, huffing and puffing as she attempted to remain at the same pace as the Time Lord. "Because I was screaming thirsty after I got to the med bay with Yuri, and I drank some of his water. And I wasn't completely oblivious to everything back there; I heard what they said. It could be inside of any of us, now. From what I can guess, you're not completely safe from it, either, are you?"

The Doctor turned his head towards her, but his eyes were averted. Clara could tell he was doing his best to seem fine, but she could see something was eating at him. His mouth bobbed open a bit, and it was then they caught up with the Captain.

"Decided to come along?" Adelaide slightly smirked, but didn't slow her pace at all. In fact, if anything she sped up.

"What you lot need here are bikes!" the Doctor exclaimed suddenly. "Seriously, little fold-away bikes, don't weigh a thing."

"Bikes!" Clara agreed. "I could use one of those." He grinned at her. "I could use a good soufflé, too. My stomach's getting rumbly."

"Soufflés?"

She squinted at him, and playfully punched him in the arm. "Yeah, soufflés! I like soufflés. My mother taught me how to bake them; she won first prize at a baking contest years ago." Her brows raised up a little as she continued. "That said, cooking's definitely not a trait that she passed on..."

Captain Adelaide Brooke rolled her eyes, and prepared to reach for the airlock door that was approaching fast in front of them. "You two make the strangest couple I've ever seen," she commented.

"We're not a couple," the Doctor shot back as she opened the airlock. "Just friends."

She took a moment to glance behind at the pair before she shook her head wearily and stepped through the doorway. The Doctor and Clara looked at each other, the Doctor with the most bemused face Clara had ever seen.

"Clara, we're not-"

Her lips slightly turned up. "I know. Come on. We need to catch up with her."

They stepped through the airlock seal, and shut the large metal door behind them with a hiss.

**~8~**

The two had no trouble in finding Adelaide in the ice field sector of Bowie Base One. Once they stepped through the airlock door connecting the dome and the modular walkway, they just had a walk though some steel floored hallways. Metal beams lined the way, and the Doctor used the many pipes sprawling above head to navigate their way to the glacier where the woman was sure to already be. When they saw her, she was standing by a railing with a computer monitor in front of her. She was typing furiously on the keyboard.

"Maggie's escaped," she stated flatly, apparently locating them in her peripheral vision. "She broke out of containment. Ed just gave me the memo."

Clara sighed, a bit distracted by everything around her. She stepped up to the railing to see below, the Doctor trailing behind her. When she saw the sight in front of her, she gasped.

"Oh my stars..."

There below was a gigantic glacier that shimmered in the light. It was frosted with a light dusting of snow, Martian snow. _Snow from a completely different planet, _she thought excitedly. The very thought of it seemed magical in itself, and was enough to distract her from the cold of the railing touching her fingers and the vapor drifting out from her mouth. A few dozen pipes fed down through the ice to supply the base with water, and down below the metal platforms that had been built around the glacier, the red rocky terrain of Mars was visible, still completely in its natural state.

"It's beautiful," she whispered, almost to herself.

"They tell legends of Mars from long ago," the Doctor began, suddenly leaning up on the bar in between Adelaide and Clara, "of a fine and noble race who built an empire out of snow. The Ice Warriors."

Adelaide seemed to be on another world entirely. (Quite literally, in fact.) "I haven't got time for stories," she murmured, busy with the computer, although Clara could tell she wished she did.

He shrugged. "Perhaps they found something down there." Clara assumed he was referring to the Martian natives. "Used their might and their wisdom to freeze it."

"Doctor, we need to find any sort of change in the water process. We've got to date the infection."

"Is that what you've been doing?" Clara asked Adelaide, who took it into herself to smack the side of the monitor. Apparently it wasn't working in the way she wanted it to. _And blimey, was it cold here!_

"Access denied," the computer happily chimed.

"I've always hated computers," Clara mumbled quietly. Adelaide chuckled slightly.

"Well, it's been doing this for a while," she said. "I'm trying to access the maintenance logs, but it's making me wait." The captain cracked her stiff fingers, and decided to take a break from the computer. She glanced between the Doctor and Clara. "You two don't look like cowards, but all you've wanted to do is leave. It's been mainly you, though," she stated clearly, nodding at the Doctor, and he frowned. "But you both seem to know so much about us."

"Well, you're famous," the Time Lord shrugged, drawing out the 'well' as he always seemed to do. Clara found it most amusing.

"It's like you know more."

This silenced the Doctor, if only for a little bit. He glanced up to the ceiling in thought, a habit of his, Clara had noticed. "This moment," he finally began, "this precise moment in time, it's like- I mean, it's only a theory, what do I know, but I think certain moments in time are fixed."

_There are fixed points throughout time where things must stay exactly the way they are, _echoed a voice at the back of Clara's head. It was a male voice unrecognizable to her, which made it standout at the forefront of her mind.

"Tiny, precious moments. Everything else is in flux, anything can happen..."

_This is not one of them, _the same voice continued_, this is an opportunity!_

"-But those certain moments," the Doctor resumed, "they have to stand. This base on Mars with you, Adelaide Brooke, this is one vital moment. What happens here must always happen."

"Which is what?" Adelaide asks.

For just a split second, his face fell, and his eyes grew dark and stormy. But as he remembered who was in front of him, he managed to plaster a clueless expression on, just for the meanwhile.

"I don't know. I think something wonderful happens. Something that started fifty years ago, isn't that right?"

Adelaide Brooke shakes her head in disbelief. "I've never told anyone that."

_Never told anyone what?_

Clara had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, which was why curiosity led her to pay close attention.

"You told your daughter. And maybe one day she tells the story to her daughter. The day the Earth was stolen and moved across the universe. And you-"

"I saw the Daleks," Adelaide breathed, and suddenly she was but a little girl, speaking through the body of a sixty year old. "We looked up. The sky had changed. Everyone was running and screaming. And my father took hold of me."

Clara listened intently as the captain closed her eyes and told them how her father left to find his wife, her mum, saying he'd promise to come back.

"I never saw him again," she said sadly. "Nor my mother. They were never found. But out on the streets, there was panic and burning. I went to the window, and there, in the sky, I saw it, Doctor. And it saw me. It stared at me. It looked right into me. And then it simply went away. I knew, that night, I knew I would follow it."

"But not for revenge."

Adelaide gazed at the Doctor, with a slight nod in agreement. "What would be the point of that?"

His eyes lit up in awe. "That's what makes you remarkable. And that's how you create history."

"What do you mean?"

The Time Lord took a breath. Then he began to speak. "Imagine it, Adelaide," he said, "if you began a journey that takes the human race all the way out to the stars. It begins with you, and then your granddaughter, you inspire her, so that in thirty years Susie Fontana Brooke is the pilot of the first light speed ship to Proxima Centauri. And then everywhere, with her children, and her children's children forging the way. To the Dragon Star, the Celestial Belt of the Winter Queen, the Map of the Watersnake Wormholes."

These celestial names he spoke of settled in Clara's heart, capturing her imagination in no other way possible. In her mind, galaxies swirled around each other, stars shinning so bright they could be seen from millions of light-years away. Even nebulae, the birthplace of stars and planets everywhere, surrounded her view. These were all things she had the possibility of seeing now, with the Doctor, and it was an incredible thought to grasp.

"One day a Brooke will even fall in love with a Tandonian prince," he continued, "and that's the start of a whole new species. But everything starts with you, Adelaide. From fifty years ago to right here, today. Imagine."

Captain Adelaide Brooke of Bowie Base One seemed to become quite star struck of the Doctor's words to her. "Who are you?" she asked warily. "Why are you telling me this? Doctor, why tell me?"

He paused. "As consolation."

Luckily for him, (as there definitely would have been some explaining to do on that last comment of his), there was a beeping sound then. Clara's head whipped around, her hair flying everywhere. It was the computer. "I think you're in, Adelaide," she noted, pointing to the monitor. The captain quickly rushed over, whispering her thanks, and got searching.

Only a few scrolls produced good results.

"Andy Stone. He logged on yesterday," she observed.

Crewmember Andy, back when he was one hundred percent healthy, gazed at the camera in the short video. "Maintenance log, twenty one twenty, November 2059," he said. "Number three water filter's bust. And guess what? The spares they sent don't fit. What a surprise." Clara silently giggled at the sarcasm dripping from that last statement. "Over and out."

"A filter!" the Doctor exclaimed, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. "One tiny little filter and then the Flood."

"But that means the infection arrived today, and the water's only cycled out of the Biodome after a week. The rest of us can't be infected," Adelaide pointed out, relief coming back into her voice. She scrambled to take the communicator from her belt- a spare one, it seemed- and pressed the talk button.

"We can leave. Ed, we're clean."

**~8~**

When Clara returned back to the Central base, it seemed like chaos had fallen. The crew scrambled about, trying to pack as much food and needed supplies into storage as they could. Steffi was beginning to lose her patience with some, especially Roman in the corner, who was having a bit of trouble putting Gadget away in storage. The arms wouldn't fold up as they were supposed to, apparently. Mia and Yuri hurried around with small dollies, carrying protein packs from place to place. Ed paced around the workspace, trying to keep everyone focused; it was a harder task than one might think.

She ran up to Mia, who was now back at the bins, taking out more packs of food. "Can I help with anything?"

The woman did a double take, but then slightly smiled, a knowing smile that made Clara a bit troubled. "Hello, Clara. Yes, if you don't mind, I could use help getting these out." She grunted, trying to get a pack out that was frozen stuck to another. Clara reached down into the bin and held down the one it was stuck to so Mia could heft the other out of there. Finally, there was a sucking noise as the ice gave way, and the protein pack came apart from the one below it.

As she paused to take a break, she looked right into Clara's eyes. "Yuri told me everything, by the way. He told me where you came from."

"He told you everything?" she questioned. "Did he tell you he loved you?" Mia's face froze. "Because he does, you know. When you get back to Earth, you should ask him out."

"Do you really think so?"

"Yeah, you should."

Mia smiled warmly, and glanced over at Yuri. Just then, someone tapped on Clara's shoulder. It was Captain Adelaide, who thrusted the bright orangey-red spacesuit she had come here with into her arms.

"Thank you, Clara. Now save yourself along with the Doctor."

With those parting words, she hurried off to help her crew finish packing up, and Clara was left standing at the side of central base. She glanced over to the Time Lord. He seemed comatose, frozen in an upright position with his spacesuit and helmet slung under his left arm, watching the crew scatter about with a blank expression. Sighing, she walked over to him.

"Doctor, please tell me what's wrong."

The hurt behind his eyes almost killed her when he turned his head.

"It's not The Flood, is it?" she continued. "Because you never quite told me exactly what happened there in the Biodome, how you got soaking wet, but I can guess. The Flood transfers through water, and they create water, so Andy sprayed you. You've got the infection?"

The Doctor offered a weak smile. "Brilliant thinking, but no." He sighed heavily, and gazed over towards the main airlock. "Being a time traveller though, you do learn things. Things most wouldn't like to know. I am aware of some of the circumstances surrounding my death, but I seriously doubt it is here. After Andy caught me, he just starred at me... and he simply said that it was not my time."

Just then, the ceiling of the base creaked, reminding the two that it was not chitchat time; the moment to escape was now.

**~8~**

Perhaps a few minutes later, Clara had just finished getting into her spacesuit, with assistance from the Doctor. He had managed to get his on solo, but then... oh, well. He was a Time Lord- he'd probably put on spacesuits thousands of times- so she'd let him skate on that one. Finally, when they were sure that everything was on secure, he hit the button that would open the outer airlock door.

"Access denied. Access denied," chirped that female computer voice. The door didn't open. Clara tried hitting it, and it still didn't budge.

"Oh, what's wrong now?" she moaned, looking at the Doctor with blatant disapproval of whatever was going on now with the computers.

Captain Adelaide Brooke's voice came over the intercom then. "Tell me what happens," she requested, although it was obvious she was definitely not kidding around here.

"Did she just _lock_ us in?" Clara asked, mouth wide open with shock.

"I don't know," the Doctor replied. In ways, it was a fitting response to both questions posed.

"Yes, you do, the captain insisted. "Now tell me."

"You should be with the others," he almost pleaded.

"Tell me!" she growled, and somehow the static of the intercom made it sound more furious than it probably was. There was a short silence.

"I could ramp up the pressure in that airlock and crush you."

Clara closed her eyes. She didn't want to think that Adelaide could ever do such a thing, but right now... she was beginning to have her doubts. So in a way, these could be her last ever thoughts, then. This could be her death, her time. Her fists clenched, and she took a deep breath.

"Except you won't," the Doctor pointed out calmly. "You could have shot Andy Stone, but you didn't. I loved you for that." He quickly looked down at Clara, with a half smile, one that she tried to return. She knew that it was shaky, however. He continued to speak. "Imagine, imagine you knew something. Imagine you found yourself somewhere. I don't know, Pompeii. Imagine you were in Pompeii."

Adelaide didn't seem to be on the same page about this as the Doctor was. "What the hell's that got to do with it?

"And you tried to save them," he went on, ignoring her comment. "But in doing so, you make it happen. Anything I do just makes it happen."

"That's not true, Doctor," Clara interjected then, snapping her head up towards him. Her eyes were wild. "You saved Kratx, got him home!" Her voice became calmer, gentler now. "You're a good man. Stop blaming everything on yourself. I don't know what may be in your past, but things happen. Just move on." He gazed down at her, hurt.

"That may be easy for you to say," he began, quietly, "but I've seen more than you could ever believe."

There was a rustling noise over the intercom, and a static filled voice shouted in the background that sounded like Steffi. "I'm still here," the captain said.

"You're taking Action One. There are four more standard action procedures, like I told you earlier, Clara. And Action Five is?"

Clara wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know anymore.

"Detonation."

"The final option. The nuclear device at the heart of the Central Dome. Today, on the twenty first of November 2059, Captain Brooke activates that device, taking the base and all her crewmembers with her." Clara swallowed. Hard. The Doctor knew what would happen all along, just as she had thought. "No one ever knows why. But you were saving Earth. That's what inspires your granddaughter. She takes your people out into the galaxy because you die on Mars. You die today. She flies out there like she's trying to meet you."

Adelaide's tone was desperate, begging for help. "I won't die. I will not."

"But your death creates the future," he said, as if that were proper consolation for somebody who was about to die. Clara couldn't even speak anymore because of the sadness of this whole thing. How the captain was able to cope with the knowledge she'd be dying in the next few minutes was beyond her. All she wanted to do was return home, to her family, to her grandchild, but it seemed as if this was one adventure that Adelaide would never have.

"Help me. Why won't you help, Doctor? If you know all of this, why can't you change it?"

"I can't."

"Why can't you find a way?" she pleaded. "You could tell me, I don't know-"

"I'm sorry, but I can't," the Doctor said seriously. "Sometimes I can, sometimes I do. Most times I can save someone, or anyone. But not you. You wondered all your life why that Dalek spared you. I think it knew. Your death is fixed in time forever. And that's right."

"And what about you?" Her voice was taunt. "Is your death fixed, as well? You'll die here too. Both of you."

Clara breathed the stale spacesuit air deep into her lungs once more. Her muscles trembled. Her body stiffened. If this was the end, then she wasn't quite ready to go. If she had to die, she'd rather say goodbye to her father first. She'd like to bid farewell to her mum as well, but... that possibility was already long gone. It was long gone almost eight years ago.

"No," the Doctor said simply.

"What's going to save you?" Adelaide asked him.

"Captain Adelaide Brooke."

Another pause. Then there was a hiss. The computer inside the airlock beeped, telling the two that they were able to leave Bowie Base One.

"Damn you," the captain muttered. Those were the last words Clara heard from her before the door opened and she was thrown back out into the brightness of the Martian surface.

Once again, sunlight glinted on her visor. She could barely see the Doctor. All she could see was red. Red was everywhere. It was in the rocks and the soil of the ground, it was in the sides of the base where the metal had rusted and corroded. It was in the tough scratchy fabric of the spacesuit she was wearing. It glared angrily down at her from space, blinding her vision and yet giving so much life. Red was life.

So was running.

She ran. She didn't know where she was running, exactly. The world blurred all around her, almost making her dizzy. She could hear her heavy breath in the tiny cramped space of the helmet. And then there was the dark silhouette of the Doctor, just barely visible a fair distance away. Was it really he, or was it an illusion? Yes, she could hear his voice. She could hear the Doctor.

"Clara? Clara, this way!" he called, and it almost sounded like he was calling from inside her head. "Don't stop, we haven't got much time!"

"Doctor?" she cried, treading across the rocks, searching more than ever before. Nothing was real, it seemed. There were only dust and stones. "Doctor, I can hear you! But where are you?" Rasping in exhaustion, she continued jogging in no particular direction, just trying to follow the voice. To her horror, she soon remembered that she couldn't follow it, as it was only a voice relayed though a speaker in her helmet.

She gasped, realizing that he could be anywhere. "_Doctor?!_" she screeched, her terror evident.

"I'm here," she heard him say then, and Clara stumbled forwards into his arms. She could hear his uneasy laugh. "You're fine, Clara. In fact, you're brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!" She let out a sob of relief, and her arms wrapped around his skinny frame like she had not seen him in a thousand years. Her heavy helmet fell against his chest.

"If they're gonna detonate the base," she whispered into the helmet's com link, "shouldn't we run?"

The Doctor gently pushed Clara upright, extending her at arm's length so he could see her face and she could see his. "Do you trust me?" She nodded. "Then we run."

Their thick-gloved hands found each other, and without looking back, they began to sprint away from Bowie Base One in the Gusev Crater. The ridge of the crater loomed in front of them, bouncing up and down in Clara's vision as they ran.

_Will we even make it?_ Clara thought. _It's a nuclear device; the TARDIS is over a kilometer away... How much time do we have?_

_You don't, _spat that other voice in her head she though she had gotten rid of.

As if that voice was an alarm clock, something exploded behind her. The tight grip the Doctor had on her hand was lost as she was ripped away from him in the shockwave. She flew through the air, and landed with a thud on a patch of particularly hard rocks. Her ears were ringing loudly, so loud she wouldn't be surprised if she burst both eardrums. She tried cautiously to look back, and saw nothing but fire in the sky, and metal shrapnel falling everywhere.

**CLANG**

Gasping, she ducked into a ball on all fours, just nearly missing being knocked down by a large support beam. It crashed onto the soil some distance behind her. She looked back to the air. Parts of the shuttle that had brought the crew to Mars were still soaring through the sky like deadly harpoons. In her peripheral vision, she located the Doctor, who was attempting to stand on shaky legs at her right. And then, her eyes growing wide with desperation, she saw it, at the very last second.

"Doctor! LOOK OUT!"

With all the power she could muster, she leaped to her feet, rolled into his side, and pushed him over. He hit the rough rocky ground. Hard.

~~~8~~~

The impact was so hard that all he could see for a few seconds was a dizzying white light. All he could hear was a horrid scream from the form lying next to him, one that he really wished to never hear again. However, it was this scream that shook him internally. It didn't matter how much he was injured physically, this sound tore open his hearts in ways he never thought possible.

Finally, his vision came back, and with a gigantic lump in his throat, he rolled to his side and up on his knees. No more big pieces of shrapnel fell, it was just ash from the explosion now. Clara lied weak next to him, on her back. A large shudder wracked his body when he saw what protruded out from just below her right breast, by the lungs. It was a rather sizable piece of metal scrap, twisted in such a way at the end as to make a deadly weapon. Her eyes flicked up at him, desperate and scared.

"Loosing air," was all she could gasp.

The Doctor finally took time to notice that the shrapnel stuck in her body had pierced through her spacesuit, and little tendrils of sweet, life giving air were already leaking out. He swallowed, knowing what he'd have to do, but tried to put on a reassuring smile anyways.

"You're fine," he tried to tell her, as he slid his sonic screwdriver out from the small pouch on the leg of his spacesuit. "You're going to get out of here. Now, I won't lie. This is going to hurt..."

He closed his eyes, and switched his screwdriver to setting 83. Melting metals and plastic. He placed it at the base of the metal shard, right where it had punctured through the suit, and activated the emitter.

In this moment, more than anything else, he was most thankful for the earsplitting sonic frequency his screwdriver always produced. If it weren't for him concentrating solely on it, then he'd have to concentrate on Clara's horrendous screams as he melded the metal with the fabric of the red spacesuit. Smoke from the hot molten metal crept into the air, and the Doctor tried not to break inside as he saw fat tears streaming down his friend's face. He hoped she would forgive him for this...

Quickly, he switched settings on the sonic device again, and flicked it over the molten mass. It solidified within seconds, successfully closing up the gap so no more air could leak out. He let out a big breath he didn't even know he was holding, and carefully pulled Clara up. She cried out in pain as the Doctor lifted her up to a sitting position, and almost gagged when she saw what had impaled her. Immediately, she moaned, silently instructing him to set her down on her back. She looked up at the Doctor fearfuly

"I'm gonna get you home," he grunted, as he tired to figure out how he could carry her, "and you will live a long, BRILLIANT life, but you have to hold on, just a little while longer!"

Clara, looking frail and weak, tried to speak. Her voice was very hoarse. "Sorry, I- I had to save you... I'm-" What she was planning to say caught in her throat, and she began to gag on fluid coming up from her lungs. She coughed; he could see blood pooling in her mouth.

The Time Lord's hearts began to beat faster, as he began to realize it was too late. He pulled himself next to her, and began stroking the cool glass of her helmet. "Clara. Stop. You're fine, you hear? You are..." -his voice wavered- "...so brave, and you will make it!"

The young woman's eyes watered up. "I won't, though," she said. "I know I'm gonna die here."

He sniffed, trying not to let any tears stream down the side of his cheek. "How?" he practically begged.

"Huh?"

"How do you know that? Why did you have to save me? If you have to die, at least tell me this!"

"I don't-" Clara starred up at him, confused.

"Please!" the Doctor burst out. He grabbed her shoulders and rubbed them with his gloved hands. "You knew I was called the Doctor before I even told you, you told me to run the very first time- Every moment I look at you I can't even understand why, just tell me!"

"You know I can't..."

"TELL ME!" he shouted, desperate.

Her eyes were glossy enough that he could see his own pain-stricken face reflected in them. "There's only one thing you can do," she whispered. "Run, you clever boy. Keep running. And remember me."

She stopped breathing. "No. Please, Clara," he whispered desperately. Her mouth was still slightly agape, but her eyes were cold, unresponsive. The Doctor's jaw tightened. It was all over. He could feel a pressure building up in his core, almost a fury. As he gazed down at the limp body in his arms, the pressure continued to build, until his spine shook and his teeth seethed with hatred towards the monstrosity that was The Flood- the parasite that had made the destruction of Bowie Base One's spacecraft necessary.

Finally, when he simply couldn't take any more, his emotional barriers completely broke down. He buried his helmeted head into her shoulder, and silently wept for the woman. Tears dripped onto the glass of his visor, slightly blurring his line of sight.

Clara was dead. She had died right in his arms. It was all his fault. He asked her to come with him. She agreed. And then she died. Just like everyone else he had ever touched or influenced, she died. Everybody died. Even his own people died. His entire family, all of his friends... He was entirely alone in this vast universe, the last son of Gallifrey. He closed his eyes, his body wracking with silent sobs.

_I'm not just a Time Lord; I'm the Last of the Time Lords. They'll never come back. Not now._

_I've got a TARDIS._

The only one who had been there for him the whole time was his TARDIS. She was there for everything; the one companion he could always count on.

_Same old life, last of the Time Lords..._

_ And they died and took it all with them. The walls of reality closed, the worlds were sealed, gone forever._

Words he had once said, spoken to friends, associates, echoed through his mind, reverberating through his hearts. Thoughts once meaningless now brought new meaning. He was the last of the Time Lords. The very last one.

_The Time Lords kept their eye on everything._

The Laws of Time. They were overseen by the Time Lords, back when Gallifrey still sat in the sky. Gallifrey...

_It's gone now._

With his people and his planet gone, there's nobody to watch over time anymore.

_But they died, the Time Lords! All of them, they died._

He had always thought it was luck he and he alone had survived. A curse, more like.

_There's no such thing as luck. Everything happens for a reason._

Perhaps... things did turn out the way they did for a purpose. He obviously couldn't save Clara, but what about Adelaide? What about Ed, and Steffi, and Roman Groom, and Yuri and Mia? Could he save them? Could he?

He sniffed one last time, let the tears dry on his face, and looked up to the sky. The universe liked to tell him he couldn't; a lie he would hear no more. He would be victorious.

_I'm the last of the Time Lords_, he thought.

_ Basically, I won._

* * *

Next chapter:

_"I'm not beaten yet," he said aloud. "I'll go outside, find the heat regulator!"_

_He stumbled over to where he had thrown his spacesuit helmet, and picked it up. The glass visor was shattered. He must have broken it when he threw it down. His mouth twitched in anger, but he managed to keep himself together._

_"Not beaten," he mumbled as he set the broken helmet back down in the rubble. "Not beaten! You've got spacesuits in the next section!"_

_Huffing and puffing, he threw himself around the corner of the airlock doorway leading into the next bay, but water was pouring through the ceiling like a turbulent waterfall. There was absolutely no way he could get through to the base's spacesuits without turning into one of them. He paused for a second to catch his breath. And then he snapped. No. No, he would not let time control him! He was a Time Lord!_

_"We're not just fighting The Flood," he bellowed as he arrived back in Central Base, "we're fighting time itself! Time and everything that's ever, ever taken my friends from me! This is for you, Clara! And I'm going to WIN!"_

* * *

**Welp, there's the Time Lord Victorious rearing his ugly face. That was also my first time writing a death scene, so I'm curious what all of you will say about it. And before anyone asks, Clara WILL be coming back. You'll see.**

**To clarify things a little bit, (in case it was confusing), the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to melt the metal shard to seal up the rip in Clara's spacesuit. If he was going to be even slightly successful in saving her life, she couldn't have oxygen leaking from her suit, as the TARDIS was a fair distance away.**

**#SaveTheDay (50th) Countdown:  
10 days! AHHH we're SO close I can taste it! **


	10. The Waters Of Mars: Time Lord Victorious

**Last chapter of The Waters Of Mars! Big thanks to The Doctor's Charlene, LeilaTheGalaxyDefender, Smoldering Blue Eyes, minachan545, kalid, esthealice17, consultingwiardinthetardis, Kalliope-Korinna-Klytaimnestia, krismp11, punkys sis, SapphireHatter, and denise3! :D**

* * *

Chapter Ten

_The Waters of Mars: Time Lord Victorious_

The Time Lord Victorious stood upright, defiant, on the rocky Martian surface. His nose pointed up into the air as he gazed down over the wreckage that was now Bowie Base One. He had no coherent idea how the base managed to stay together, nor if all the crew were able to stay alive, but no matter the reason he was about to change time for the better. For he, once nicknamed Theta Sigma of the Prydonian Chapter, no longer could fit into the name "Doctor." He was Time's Champion, The Warrior, The Oncoming Storm, and he had a duty to accomplish.

He was the last of the Time Lords. His people were gone forever, leaving a great responsibility on his shoulders. The course of time was literally in his hands. He could feel its power rushing through his veins in a burst of adrenaline, daring him to act upon it. He was the sole protector of humanity- no, of the entire universe- and would not be stopped by anything. He was invincible.

A single glance behind him to the young woman's dead body was all it took to immediately strip him of that last thought. No, no, he was certainly not invincible if the loss of a simple human life stabbed him in the hearts this much, but for the sake of all the worlds in the sky he would have to pretend to be. Oddly enough, however, something had moved in the corner of his confining spacesuit visor, bringing him back to reasonable thought if only for a moment.

There was... _something..._ there.

Quickly, he turned around, and looked down to the spot where Clara lied. Whatever had been moving must have made a speedy exit, because there was no one- or nothing- to be seen. He took a closer gander.

Red rocks now edged around her body, building up what could almost be seen as a burial mound, and the long piece of shrapnel was somewhere else, not sticking out of her body. The absence of the metal bar was currently unexplainable. It was remotely possible that rubble could have settled around her when he wasn't paying attention, but there was one big problem with this way of thinking- the way it formed a simple design, spirals of stones circling around her, it looked perfect. _Too_ perfect.

Deep inside, his mind screamed at him. Someone had to have been here and had done this. It could have even been him. But no matter how much his hearts ached and his mind soared, he kept an emotionless barrier guarding his physicality. He had to. His face remained blank.

Again, the world around reminded him- it was his fault this innocent human girl had died. And so a resolute grimace heralded on the next chapter of his life. _No more_, he thought. _No more. I will not stand around and watch millions of people fall into the traps of time! Its Laws are mine! I am going back to the base, and every single one of them left will LIVE!_

**~8~**

The Time Lord rushed into the central dome of Bowie Base One on a mission. It was in ruins now; the hull was broken, alarms were blaring, sparks flew everywhere, and the remaining crew members curled up on the floor next to each other were losing oxygen fast. Mia's face fell in view, and it was apparent that she wholly believed that she was going to die. Well, he was going to change that very quickly.

No more than a second had passed after returning to the base before he threw the can he had retrieved on his way in to her. "Mia, take this sealant, fix that rig! Yuri, open emergency oxygen."

Both immediately took his orders and acted upon them, and the sealant Mia began to spray where the leak was already proved to be making a world of a difference. He turned his attention to the only other crewmember in sight, the captain, who was dazedly positioned on the floor.

"Adelaide, don't just sit there," he said as he reached an arm down for her to grab.

"Where's your friend?" Captain Brooke grunted as she stepped to her feet.

The Time Lord stopped dead in his tracks for just a split second. "She died. In the shuttle explosion," was all the explanation he gave, without showing a single ounce of feeling. The he began to grin wildly when he felt the improvement in the oxygen crisis, flipping to the complete other side of the emotion spectrum. "Ah, that's better. The Dome's still got integrity! It's ten feet of steel-combination, made in Liverpool. Magnificent workmanship."

Adelaide stepped up to him, desperate. "It can't be stopped. Don't die with us, too. Not now."

He looked down at her, defiance in his eyes. "No, because someone told me just recently. They said I was going to die." His eyes grew wilder. "They said he will knock four times, and I think I know what that means, and it doesn't mean right here, right now, because I don't hear anyone knocking, do you?"

**BANG**

**BANG **

He paled, and turned to see Andy, pounding on the window of the airlock, trying with all the power he had to get in to them.

**BANG**

His hearts nearly stopped, but he only frowned, and launched himself over to one of the computer monitors. "Three knocks is all you're getting," he growled, and slammed his hand down on one of the keys. Immediately, the door electrified, and Andy screamed as the current flowed through his wet body. He fell away from the door. The Flood's progress was stilled, if only for a short moment. Not showing any sort of remorse for these actions, the ancient man ticked his head. "Water and electricity, _bad_ mix! Now then, what else have we got?"

"But there's no way to fight them!" Captain Adelaide insisted.

His finger shot into the air, realizing... "Heat! They use water, so we can use heat!" He slammed himself back down to the keyboard, fiddling with the controls until he saw what he wanted, and ranked the heat to full strength. It would get insufferably hot, but it might just save all of their lives. "Works against the Ice Warriors, works against The Flood. Ramp up the environment controls and steam them!"

"But you said we die!" There was a loud crash, rubble falling somewhere in the vicinity, and the whole central base shook. Adelaide took a breath, bracing herself on the unstable floor, and continued. "For the future, for the human race!"

The Time Lord Victorious vaguely glanced at her, busy working with the base's computer systems as he responded. "Yes, because there are laws. There are Laws of Time. Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died." He finally turned around to face her, and when he did, he was met with confusion. "They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me!" he shouted, pointing to himself. He verged on the edge of insanity to the rest of the crew. "It's taken me all these years to realize the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!"

**WHAM**

Everyone was thrown against the walls like rag dolls as something in another section of the base blew. Alarms blared and the Time Lord rotated his neck, ungracefully popping a vertebra back into place with a snap. He cursed under his breath in Gallifreyan as he began to get up from the floor. That had hurt a lot...

Captain Adelaide Brooke skirted away from him and towards one of the other monitors. Mia and Yuri were standing at her shoulders, gazing at each other. The captain noted the flashing text box that had appeared on the right side of the screen. She frowned. "Environment controls are down. Sorry, Doctor, it looks like history's got other ideas."

_Don't call me Doctor_, the darkened side of his mind hissed. _That's not who I am anymore. I am the Sole Survivor. _

"I'm not beaten yet," he said aloud. "I'll go outside, find the heat regulator!"

He stumbled over to where he had thrown his spacesuit helmet, and picked it up. The glass visor was shattered. He must have broken it when he threw it down. His mouth twitched in anger, but he managed to keep himself together.

"Not beaten," he mumbled as he set the broken helmet back down in the rubble. "Not beaten! You've got spacesuits in the next section!"

Huffing and puffing, he threw himself around the corner of the airlock doorway leading into the next bay, but water was pouring through the ceiling, forming a turbulent waterfall. There was absolutely no way he could get through to the base's spacesuits without turning into one of _them_. He paused for a second to catch his breath. And then he snapped. No. No, he would not let time control him! He was a Time Lord!

"We're not just fighting The Flood," he bellowed as he arrived back in Central Base, "we're fighting time itself! Time and everything that's ever, ever taken my friends from me! This is for you, Clara! And I'm going to WIN!"

At that precise moment, there was a horrendous sound that echoed through the base. It sounded like screaming, and immediately his mind lapsed back to Clara's death, and the noises she made when he was trying to save her... But it was nothing like a human scream. Not anymore. The Time Lord Victorious returned in a flourish, and ran over to Yuri, who had found some live feed from the glacier, where cracks were opening up on the surface.

"What is that?" Mia screeched.

"Something is happening to the glacier!" the Russian responded in a contained shout.

Growling, the Time Lord had to force himself to pace away so he could think. "Think-a think-a think-a think... What have we got? Not enough oxygen." He opened up the lid of a metal tin, before jutting out his chin in derision and slamming it back down. "Protein packs, useless." He ran a hand through his already distressed hair as he continued to pace the room, speaking utter nonsense. "Glacier, glacier mints, minty, Monty, molto bene, bunny, bonny, bish bash bosh. Argh! The room, the room, look at the room. Section F. What's in Section F?" He extended his arms towards the others, expecting a response. It was silent. He frowned. "Anyone!" he hollered, gesturing for someone to please speak up.

"Nothing," Yuri managed quickly, before the man's rage grew any bigger. "I-It's just storage."

"Storing what?"

"I don't know," he flustered. "Er, the weather spikes, the robots, the atom clamps..."

"Atom clamps. Atom clamps?" The Time Lord ran over to the side and opened one of the units just a crack. He grinned when he saw what was inside. "Who needs atom clamps? I have a funny robot!"

He threw the door down to the floor to reveal...

"Gadget gadget."

"Oh yes!" he proclaimed, and apprehensively, Yuri rushed over to help him maneuver the fragile robot out of its holding unit. While he brought the robot out, the Time Lord Victorious reached back in and carried a handled metal case out. He slapped it on a table. He quickly reached deep into the pocket on the leg of his spacesuit, (bigger on the inside, of course), and brought out both his sonic screwdriver and his personal TARDIS key. The ancient yet young man bent down next to Gadget, and secured the key in between the robot's fingers.

"You take that," he murmured quietly as he made sure his key to all of space and time would not fall out. "Good boy." He pushed himself up to his feet, and hobbled over to where he set the metal briefcase down. Before anybody knew what exactly he was planning, he threw the auto-gloves on, and stretched his fingers. "Off we go then."

"Gadget gadget," the robot responded automatically, and rolled out from Central Base. He watched as it left his view, and then looked down at the small monitor. It was all up to him now.

"Come on, come on," he muttered, as he carefully steered the robot through a curtain of water first, then a wave of fire. Gadget sparked coming through the water, but luckily enough the fire was easily avoided. He heard a beeping sound begin somewhere behind him.

"Implementing Captain's protocol," the computer's voice droned

His brow furrowed. "Adelaide? What are you doing?"

"Oh my gosh, Action Five," Mia squeaked, realizing what Captain Adelaide Brooke had turned on.

The Time Lord's eyes darkened at the captain. "If I have to fight you as well, then I will."

"Nuclear device now active and primed," said the computer.

His eyes flicked over to the computer, only remotely noticing Yuri in the background, whom was still monitoring the cracks forming in the glacier. If that thing ruptured, it would be bad news. As time originally went, the base exploded before The Flood emerged, but now... this fixed point was balanced on the edge of a scale. Anything could happen, in theory.

In this case, however, it was no theory. He WOULD save everyone. He had to. He refused to let Adelaide keep time in its proper course. Grunting, he managed to finger his sonic screwdriver into his hand, and gave the equipment a good helping zap.

"Blast off!" he yelled the second Gadget moved out onto the Martian surface, clenching his fists. In the small display he had from its outer camera, he could see land rushing past at an amazing speed. Behind him, water dripped from dangerous areas in the ceiling. The robot wasn't nearly going fast enough; the nuclear countdown was almost down to 60.

"Faster!" he screamed desperately, with his hair flying every which way.

Time blurred, and seconds muddled into each other. He watched as the small robot left the Gusev Crater, and made that final open stretch across the flat desolate fields of the red planet. His gaze drifted down, and his grip on the auto-gloves tightened. Sparks blew past his ears, nearly grazing his sideburns, but he really didn't notice. He didn't notice Adelaide, Mia, and Yuri holding each other in their last seconds together, either. He was too absorbed in his victorious duty. He smiled gleefully as he saw his dear old blue box becoming closer and closer in the moving picture.

"Nuclear device entering final process," the computer reminded him, being humorously blasé for an announcement like this.

The TARDIS was practically in front of him now, the robot creeping closer and closer. Now, just to get it here... His arm slowly rose up, and Gadget's followed. He lined the small key up with the keyhole and inserted it in. His wrist turned. So did the robot's. And then the door opened, revealing the beautiful interior of his ship. He smirked. "And we're in! Ha, ha!"

But he wasn't victorious yet. There were still only forty seconds in the countdown left. He was running out of time; it was slipping through his grasp. Just like Clara.

It took longer than he wished to set the controls for the TARDIS remotely. Nearly twenty seconds were spent on this task. Since he wasn't completely aware of the exact coordinates of where he was standing at the moment, he instead set his ship to follow the signal of his sonic screwdriver and land there. Just the hand brake to flip now, and...

The Time Lord, now very victorious, stood up from the table and threw the auto-gloves to the side. He walked out in the middle of the wreckage of Bowie Base One, in front of his materializing time ship. Just a few seconds left. 10... 9... 8... 7...

The TARDIS fully materialized with just 5 seconds to go. He swung open her doors. Grinning, he reached back to the three surviving crewmembers, just three of eight, and beckoned them in. It was an offer that- with a nuclear bomb about to explode any moment now- anyone would be foolish to refuse.

2...

He slammed the doors shut.

1.

**~8~**

The Time Lord exited his time ship with much gravitas, the three crewmembers, Adelaide, Mia, and Yuri, in following. They were somewhere in the outskirts of London, on a snowy Gregorian street. Lampposts illuminated the delicate snowflakes that fell in the cold, crisp night. It was certainly a good time to be wearing his trench coat. He saw Mia run out behind him, and she gazed back at the TARDIS, slightly frightened. The other two just looked confused. His brows crinkled.

"Isn't anyone going to thank me?" he asked.

Before anybody could so much as respond, Gadget rolled out behind him, (although he had no clue how it was still moving, with the auto-gloves being blown up on Mars), and its systems shut down. The Time Lord merely shrugged. "He's lost his signal," he stated simply. "Doesn't know where he is."

Adelaide blinked, and suddenly nodded towards one of the townhouses in front of them. "That's my house."

He frowned. "Don't you get it? This is the twenty first of November 2059. It's the same day on Earth." A tiny smile brightened his face as he looked up to the sky. "And it's snowing. I love snow!"

"That thing?" Mia piped up then. Yuri was standing to the side still silently pondering it all. "It's bigger. I mean, it's bigger on the inside. Just like Clara said." She paused, and shook her head in fear. "You're absolutely mad." With that, she began to walk off, only stopping when she realized her good friend wasn't with her. "Yuri? Yuri! Are you coming?"

He turned to the captain first for permission. She simply nodded him off. "Go ahead, Yuri."

"Yes, ma'am."

He ran after her. The Time Lord Victorious watched silently as he disappeared around a street corner. Then his attention turned back to Adelaide Brooke. She did not seem happy at all, a strange fact saying as he had just saved her from an unneeded and frankly messy death.

"You saved us," she stated plainly.

"Just think though," he began, trying to explain the blatantly obvious to her. "Your daughter, and your daughter's daughter, you can see them again. Family reunion."

She didn't seem to be impressed. "But I'm supposed to be dead."

"Not any more."

There was a short period of time in which Adelaide just looked at him. She didn't say anything, just looked at him. It was almost like she was trying to peer into his soul.

"I get it," she muttered then. "This is because of Clara, isn't it? Because she died. And now you feel the need to save all of us, like you could somehow make up for it."

"Adelaide. Don't you dare drag her into this. Don't you dare."

"It is. There's no denying it now. And look what you've done," she frowned. "Susie, my granddaughter. The person she's supposed to become might never exist now."

He silently chortled at this. "Nah, 'coz now Captain Adelaide can inspire her face-to-face," his face brightened. "Different details, but the story's the same."

"You can't know that!" she outburst, growing even more desperate. "And if my family changes, the whole of history could change. The future of the human race! No one should have that much power."

The Time Lord stood in thought for a moment. The corner of his lip ever so slightly turned up into a cruel smirk. "Tough."

Then the captain seemed to have a sudden moment of realization, as if she just then began to think of the universal ratifications of the man's actions. "You should have left us there."

"Adelaide, I've done this sort of thing before," he calmly responded. Almost too calmly. "In small ways, saved some little people, but never someone as important as you. Oh, I'm good."

She was horrified. "Little people? What, like Mia and Yuri? Who decides they're so unimportant? You?"

He purposefully ignored her question. "For a long time now, I thought I was just a survivor, but I'm not," he said. "I'm the winner."

Adelaide could sense the quite dramatic shift in attitude as he said this. His eyes darkened, and his body language became harder to read, as if he were hiding something.

"That's who I am. The Time Lord Victorious."

"And there's no one to stop you."

"No."

"This is wrong, Doctor," Captain Brooke stated. "I don't _care_ who you are. The Time Lord Victorious is wrong."

He kept perfect eye contact with her, but the evident darkness locked behind his eyes was enough to almost make her squirm. "That's for me to decide. Now, you'd better get home. Oh, it's all locked up. You've been away. Still, that's easy." His face hardened; he swished around and pointed his screwdriver at her door, quickly unlocking it in an overdramatic flourish. "All yours."

"Is there nothing you can't do?" Adelaide glowered.

"Not any more."

The woman bit her lip, in deep thought. "Why don't you save her, then? Clara. If you think you can change things like this, why not save her? After all, according to you she's just a little person."

"Adelaide. No," he said, stepping forward with ferocity. "Don't tempt me."

Captain Adelaide Brooke walked away, but turned around one last time to give him some parting words. "I seriously worry for anybody who stumbles upon you. Go on. Fly away, change time. Just don't change mine."

Her head swung around and she lifted herself up the steps to her small home. She opened the door. Only one last time did she glance behind her, before closing it and her connection to the hubris filled Time Lord. He watched her with an all-knowing smirk, aware that she would live many more brilliant days to come and could now inspire countless more young humans to travel the stars. And this was all possible because of him. Just how many more important people could he save, how many more lives could he touch? Satisfied, he began to swagger off back to his TARDIS, in wonder of how his entire world seemed to have changed in just the space of hours. Still, it was all for the better.

It was only the blast of a laser-powered gun that managed to shatter the glass containing whatever was left of the true, caring, compassionate Doctor deep down inside. His eyes widened in shock and fear, unable to speak, while utterly knowing exactly what had just happened behind his turned back. In the back of his mind, he could feel a once-fixed point in time shift, like the gear of a clock sliding just one tooth further. Captain Adelaide Brooke died on the twenty-first of November 2059, but no longer on Mars. She died on Earth.

His stomach clenched up, as he mentally followed the course of this new time stream. What would change, anything? Did Susie Fontana Brooke still travel into the stars?

Luckily, it was still a yes. Time healed itself, and although the place did not matter, it seemed the clever Adelaide always needed to die.

_I don't _care_ who you are. The Time Lord Victorious is wrong._

Hearing her words echo though the back of his head, the Doctor's breath caught up in his throat like he had just emerged from a nightmare. He clamped his eyes shut, now reveling in feeling once more, not only physical feeling and the brutal chill touching his cheeks, but also _emotions_.

The consequence trodden Time Lord turned around to meet the eyes of an Ood. Remembering what they had once said to him, "Your song is ending," he realized the horrid mistake he had made, one he could never take back.

"I've gone too far. Is this it? My death? Is it time?"

He fell to his knees in the snow. The wet and cold quickly began seeping through the leg of his suit, and he shivered. Then, the Ood simply disappeared. He blinked. It wasn't time just yet, apparently. Although looking back, he wasn't quite sure what he had expected from that encounter, really. He kind of doubted the Ood would smite him in his spot and force him to regenerate. Still shaken, he got back to his feet and stepped towards the TARDIS, refusing to look back at Adelaide's house for fear that the guilt would be the thing that killed him.

His TARDIS lovingly reached out to comfort his troubled mind as he walked through her doors, but for the Doctor, life still seemed like a dream. The main console grew closer to meet him, but it wasn't quite the same. It was like he was floating above, an out-of-body experience.

_This is because of Clara, isn't it? _Adelaide's simple comment was twisted into a taunt in the back of his tortured mind. He wished it would stop. _Because she died._

"Oh, Clara..." he whispered, stroking the console. "What's happened to me? What have I done?"

**DONG. DONG. DONG.**

The cloister bells rang out form somewhere in the ship, and the Doctor couldn't help but think they were taunting him, too. His mouth settled into a defiant grimace.

"No. Not now. NEVER now."

He threw down the hand-break, and the TARDIS was instantly thrown into the time vortex.

* * *

**Since I love all of you, and it's the 50th in three days, you all get a teaser from chapter eleven. Review, and I'll be able to give you a substantial snippet, (608 words, to be exact), because it's like Whovian Christmas right now! :D**

Next chapter:

_He plodded near heartlessly down the empty roads. His shoulders were hunched, his head hung low, and even his typical swagger was vacant in the moment. His ship grew closer and closer in sight. When he could reach out for it, he retrieved the key from his pocket and began to slip it in to the lock._

_Something rustled to his left._

_He turned and hastily put the key back in his pocket, where it would be safe. It was a woman; she wore a simple black dress, and her face was veiled._

_"Good evening, Doctor," the woman enunciated. Even through the veil, he could see her tight smile. Somewhere deep down he doubted this encounter could turn out well. His heart rate sped up in both hearts, and he began to slowly back away._

_A shape landed behind him, causing him to flip his awareness to his right as well. The shape was also a she, a young dark haired woman dressed for action. "Now, don't you try any funny business, Mister," she said, walking closer. "We know who you are. You should trust us."_

* * *

**#SaveTheDay (50th) countdown:  
****THREE. MORE. DAYS...**

**Ladies and gents, next time I update we'll have a 50th anniversary episode under our belts! We're almost there! :D  
(Then next we get the Christmas ****special, and Peter Capaldi's entrance as the Doctor! So excited to see what dearest Peter adds to the table!)**

**By the way, if anyone's interested, I've just made a forum called Doctor Who Shippers United, where advocates of any and all ships can come together to gush and share stories. Check it out, if you like, and feel free to create a topic. A link is on my bio! :-)**


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